


A Dream of Terrors

by Spearka



Category: Game of Thrones (TV), XCOM (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alien Technology, Alternate Season/Series 08, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Crossover, Diplomacy, Game of Thrones Spoilers, Gen, Magic, Original Character(s), Originally Posted on FanFiction.Net, Psionics, Science Fiction, Spaceships, The War for the Dawn, War, White Walkers, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 01:53:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 36,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19843114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Spearka/pseuds/Spearka
Summary: Crossover between Game of Thrones and XCOM. As the Dead march south, a new and mysterious force from another world is poised to change Westeros forever.





	A Dream of Terrors

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that this piece is still a work in progress and extra chapters will be added over time.
> 
> AUTHOR'S NOTE: Thank you all so much for your support and sticking with me on the completion of Chapter 1, I am sorry for not releasing these parts in a punctual manner but significant personal commitments and difficulties in writing style have prevented me from doing so, if you would like to help contribute to DoT either through story suggestions or for beta-reading, feel free to give me a PM and I will get back to you as soon as possible.

** PROLOGUE: WINTERFELL **

The rain fell in sheets, the drops washing away the winter landscape of the ancient castle back into the green and browns that were usually reminiscent of summer. This was supposed to be winter, yet the snow had left the landscape entirely, the unrelenting rain melting the ground into a muddy quagmire. Even in spite of this, the castle bustled with frantic activity. All the denizens of Winterfell knew about the news emanating from Eastwatch that the Wall had fallen, bringing with it the Army of the Dead. Men, women and children alike found themselves worked to exhaustion to fortify the castle against the forces of the Night King.

Jon barely paid attention to the mysterious weather, the muddy ground was hard to pass through and the wooden spikes he carried from the moat along with his waterlogged black cloak he kept from his days at the Night’s Watch did not help at all. He arrived at the courtyard before being promptly interrupted…

“M’lord…”, Ser Davos Seaworth approached him, holding his own, less ornate cloak above his head.

“I figured I’d see you here, I don’t think you have stayed in one place ever since you’ve arrived back here. You sure you don’t want to lie down for a minute?”

Jon promptly responded: “Perhaps, but I cannot let these stakes lie out in the open, who knows when the Dead may arrive and when that comes, the trench won’t be any use if the stakes are too soaked to burn”

He rushed through the hallway into the crypts entrance before throwing them down. “There, should be fine for now…” A roughly dressed peasant passed by soon after, himself also carrying a bundle towards the lower levels of the crypt. The trench was only a small facet of the various defences that had been thrown up against the Army of the Dead. If numbers weren’t on their side, then they would still make it as difficult as possible to get to them.

“I haven’t seen weather get this bad since my early smuggling days in Flea Bottom, I guess the only reprieve I can have is that I don’t have to navigate a ship in these conditions” Davos stated, shivering from the cold that still lingered in the air.

“Last time I saw weather like this was in the Gift, back when I was spying on the free folk”, Jon said.

“Aye, I think you’ve told me this story before, they tried to make you kill a horse breeder before…”

“…Before they tried to kill me” Jon finished, “I barely escaped with my life, I had to kill their warg and three others just to escape, people I knew, people I had spent months getting to know, people whose stories I had just cut short. I went to Castle Black all the same even if one of them shot me full of arrows doing so”.

Davos enquired, “Didn’t you tell me before that this was the same wildling whose body you took beyond the Wall? sounds like you had quite the history with her considering you brought that up”; Jon immediately replied, “There’s nothing to tell, it doesn’t matter anymore”. Davos nodded in agreement, “And now they fight for us against…” Jon interrupted, “They fight WITH us, they have dealt with the White Walkers longer than any of us and have paid dearly for it, do you still think after all these years they’ll still blindly follow some southern lord to fight for someone they don’t know to put them on a throne they’ll never see?”

Davos didn’t answer, “I should go back inside, your sister may be right about having too many mouths to feed but someone still has to do the job and it seems only fitting that the Onion Knight of Cape Wrath should do the job.”

A great thunderclap struck the ground in that very moment, with several labourers throwing anything they had in hand and running hastily into shelter. Jon hurried towards the battlements, throwing down his waterlogged cloak. Scores of peasants and nobles of more minor houses rushed inside, seeking shelter on anything possible: A group of blacksmiths ran towards the crypts, several farmers held close to the castle walls, their woven sacks arranged as a makeshift tarp; On the side a Dothraki rider struggled to keep his horse still, each strike of thunder jumping his beast ever further all the while as the Unsullied guards remained motionless, the rain sliding off their forged helmets.

Jon rushed up to the castle walls, trying his best not to slip on the soaked steps “Get back inside! Forget the stakes!” He yelled towards the remaining few labourers outside… no response. Another giant thunderclap filled the sky, each strike louder and harder than the one before, the storm grew ever stronger. The sky darkened from day into dusk, any kind of conversation or screaming from the people below became muted entirely by never-ending thunder; an unholy shriek filled the castle as the very sky tore in half. A purple fissure emerged from the clouds, the lightning storms around converging on this tear, further expanding the hole in the sky. What few people unfortunate enough to be directly under the fissure found themselves collapsed onto the ground, their eyes and mouths bled as the foul purple humours emanating from the tear rent their minds.

Almost as soon as the fissure appeared, a roar shook the foundations of Winterfell as a colossal grey figure charged through the fissure. Its short, stubby wings and mouth glowed with moonlight, a single, inky slit for an eye stayed unblinking, the creature groaning as if it was in pain as it came thundering downwards onto the castle below.

It was at this moment that Jon recoiled to the ground, his head burned with a deep, intense pain as the beast groaned and roared, its heartbeat growing increasingly loud as it began to fly right past the castle, its colossal figure casting a great shadow that easily covered the Godswood at a bare minimum. The wings of the great creature swung and swivelled as it tried to keep itself level, narrowly missing the Keep before plunging right into the ground a scant two miles from the castle walls, its landing carving a deep wound in the muddy ground it now stood on, the pain had stopped.

As quickly as it came, the fissure closed, the weather calmed and the screams emanating from the colossus died back down into silence, with several onlookers gazing at what exactly had come through. It wasn’t long before the silence was broken once again however, this time from the Dragons as the creatures flew straight towards the interloper, their mother saddled closely to Drogons back.

Jon had precious little time to waste, with whatever bannermen he could spare, he rode out too, closely following the Dragon Queens path. He was accompanied by the bannermen of Houses Hornwood, Mormont and what few Umber men had not accompanied young Eddard to Last Hearth as well as a small contingent of Unsullied following behind. When at last he saw the iron beast up close he could only guess as to what it was, the simple iron grey it displayed from afar was revealed to be more complex, with a black stripe running along the flanks its of lighter grey skin. A quick, muddy clattering of hooves heralded Ser Davos as he joined Jon on his little expedition:

“Well, this is certainly new”, he quipped, as equally confused as everyone else who could see what happened.

“What is this beast?” Jon mused, “I have seen giants, white walkers, snow bears and other horrors from my time in the Watch, but never have I seen a creature with steel for skin”

“Looks more like a ship to me, granted it’s laid out backwards, but it still looks the part. You’ve got your lower deck in the working area right ahead and the upper deck in the bow. I’m guessing whoever’s inside use those paddles to move around instead of sails?”.

Davos continued gesturing at the thing yet one thing caught Jon’s eye, he could see a symbol on the abominations head, what looked like a house sigil but unlike anything he had seen before. It was a shield, per saltire with three stars atop three horizons on a field of blue, there appeared to be some words on the top, he couldn’t quite read them, it was quite far away and hard to observe on horseback. He waved at the Queen, herself perplexed at this unusual symbol before enquiring.

“Do you know what it says?! I can’t read it from here”.

The Dragon Queen read the words on dragonback; bewildered before landing her dragon next to the Iron hulk, with Rhaegal promptly following suit.

“I don’t understand” she replied, “It’s not Valyrian or any other language I am aware of, I don’t know what it means”.

“Can you describe it?”, Jon simply asked. She replied as best as she could, the two of them gazing at this monstrosity from the skies that defied reason itself:

“Vigilo Confido”

* * *

** THE AVENGER: CENTRAL OFFICER BRADFORD. **

The bridge fell dark, a single red light blinking in and out as the light from outside barely illuminated the room. Several of the bridge crew got up, barely trying to make heads or tails of what exactly had transpired over the past few minutes.

Central Officer Bradford got up from his seat, walking with a slight limp following the impact; suffice it to say it wasn’t his best landing but given the circumstances, he was lucky that the thing landed in one piece.

“Can someone turn that alarm off and give me a damage report?!” He ordered in a gravelly voice, his days of drinking and running from place to place following the invasion may have been gone for years but it took its toll on him nonetheless.

He went to a nearby console on the bridge, initially trying to ascertain where on earth the ship had landed before wantonly hitting the blank screens when an intercom went up from the Engineering bay:

“We have a complete system overload, we’ll need a total system reset to get the systems back up and running, your piloting skills have also damaged the landing gear legs 1 and 2, we’ll need to retract them individually if we want to conduct repairs which we can only do once we’ve removed all the mud from it”.

Her message was cut short as a door on the bridges upper level were thrown open; a man, roughly in his mid to late 20’s yet slender and tall with inky black hair marched downstairs towards the command console, the ADVENT chip he wore around his neck making no doubt in anyone’s mind who he was.

“Can someone tell me what the bloody hell just happened?!”

Doctor Tygan began to speak over the intercom from the Lab: “Commander, I have detected a significant power spike in the Shadow Chamber that occured about five minutes ago, whatever it did, it opened a psionic rift that has dragged us through, I will need to go through the data and gather atmospheric readings once the relevant systems come back online.”

Shen replied: “I’m still trying to pinpoint where it has taken us, but the computer systems are down, I’ll to try and use Rover to remotely connect to any GPS satellites that may be in range and work out our location from here”.

“Go ahead, Shen, I’ll try and get a message through to inform HQ about this” Central replied, the Avenger had a separate comms array that drew from emergency power, a feature that Shen viewed as necessary following an attack on the ship by one of the Elders so-called “Chosen” a year back.

The Commander gazed out of the window, he could barely see the image of a medieval-style castle on the far right, he was almost within touching distance of the glass as he stretched to get a proper look at the thing. Even despite his so-called “legacy” of military leaders and his hours mulling over ancient and modern battles he never actually got to see a proper castle with his own eyes before. It wasn’t long before something else got his attention however…

“I can’t seem to establish contact through comms” Central said, “This should be the right frequency but I’m not getting anything”. He frustratingly swung the frequency knob around; in the days when ADVENT was still in full force each resistance faction operated under its own radio frequency to make their individual transmissions harder to detect, yet even under these stations nothing turned up. Not even the Templar frequency, which had recently been buzzing with 24/7 preachiness about psionics also fell completely silent.

“Central…” The Commander asked; he paid no attention, still trying to cycle through every resistance frequency he knew.

“I’m trying to get contact, just give me just a minute”.

“Central…” The Commander asked again, a little louder this time. Still he ignored his call.

“Skirmisher frequencies aren’t working, you think we’ve landed somewhere in Europe? I know they have a history with castles, though this doesn’t expl-“The Commander roared in interruption:

“CENTRAL, THERE ARE ACTUAL DRAGONS OUTSIDE!!”.

He immediately recoiled, “What?!”, he immediately went over to the window and, true to his word, there they were. Two full-size dragons were overhead and heading straight for the ship, one of them was large, matted black in colour with red highlights streaking along his neck; the other was smaller, with darkened emerald wings with similarly green highlights on his neck. These creatures weren’t ADVENT, such diversity among creatures, no matter how little, was impossible in their experience with the organisation.

“It’s not just that, look here” The Commander said as Central passed the binoculars back to him.

“We have company, and I don’t have high odds that a completely different world produced people that looked just like us… Unless this is that so-called ‘Planet of the Faceless’ Tygan joked in his autopsy report”

“Of all the places we had to crash in, we had to land in a Renaissance fair, didn’t we?”, Central joked semi-seriously.

“This is bad, if we even lost one important part that makes this ship fly we’ll be stranded here forever. I don’t think it’s likely those spear-swingers would be of any assistance”

Several consoles flickered back to life, with almost all the bridge crew frantically tapping away at the computers all with their own goals: one only wanted to see if their music collection survived the trip, one of them logged their experience of the journey in the ocean of logs already present, another was only cycling through external cameras.

“I have managed to get several basic systems back online” Shen began: “I can’t seem to connect to any satellites with Rover or anything else I can get back at this point, I’ll keep you posted once I get something”

“Don’t bother, Lily, I don’t think anyone around here knows about what on earth a radio is”, The Commander replied.

“I don’t understand, why?”

“Meet me in the bridge, we’ll discuss this in detail”

The Commander turned towards Rodriguez, one of the bridge crew, “Could you get a message on the PA to send Tygan here? We’ll also need the bridge to ourselves for a while”

Rodriguez called to the bridge crew, “You heard the guy, let’s go everyone, Let’s see how quickly we can empty the bar!”

“Dear God, I hope we won’t have to stick to our food stores or we won’t last a month in this ship”, Central muttered, his gaze briefly turning towards his crew

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that, I’m sure we can strike a deal with these locals”.

Dr. Richard Tygan arrived quickly to the bridge, his head marked with a bruise from the crash followed by Lily Shen, datapad in hand with her most recent diagnostics from the ship. The four of them gathered around the central console.

“Tygan, any updates getting the systems online?” Central asked.

“I have conducted a full-band sensor sweep of the local area. I have found something that is deeply concerning”

“Lay it on me”; The Commander replied.

“I have detected multiple psionic energy signatures from within the castle though I cannot determine exactly how many.”

“I see, so I presume you already know about the dragons flying around outside?”, The Commander stated.

“Excuse me?”

He put up the feed from the starboard cameras. The creatures having since landed alongside a small army’s worth of foot soldiers. All but the Commander just stood there, unable to properly process their thoughts into words.

“How is this possible?” Shen asked.

“I could not have imagined this in my wildest dreams. The Shadow Chamber did not just transport us through space, but across a multiverse into the reality that we now see.” Tygan said, with a tone bordering between fervent and concerned.

“That’s ridiculous!” Shen uttered, “How do you know these dragons aren’t another one of ADVENTs creations? Not to mention that these people could just be a scattered group of survivors”

“She’s right” Central said, “It is as you had said once, Doctor, ‘Nothing is impossible when it come to the aliens.’ It would make sense that they would cook those things up as a weapon of terror, what better way to inspire fear in the hearts of the Resistance than to bring to life the dragons of folklore? Anyway, I’ll have one of the bridge crew figure out what’s wrong with the radio while we meet these dragon riders or whatever they’ll call themselves.”

“It’s not just the isolated psionic readings” Tygan countered, “The background readings too show elevated levels of psionic energy, were such a phenomenon to occur in our own world we would have detected it from orbit. It is of great importance that we need to make long-terms plans to ration our supplies”

The Commander sighed, ignoring the bickering among the three. “Doctor, If your hypothesis is true, can you find us a way to get us back home?”.

“I did not even know this was possible, much less devise a process for.” Tygan replied, “I will need more data on how this occurred from the Shadow Chamber logs to learn the process and nature of how we were transported”

“Do whatever you can, we can’t afford to stay here longer than we can”

“Commander, with your permission, I would like to send a research team to the castle, the psionic energy readings could offer valuable insights in the field”, Tygan requested.

“You’ve got it. In fact, all of us will need to go there. If we’re going to survive in this new world then we’ll need to get friendly with the locals, especially considering our rather frightening entrance, I imagine” The Commander addressed.

“Commander, please. I’ll go with a squad as a diplomat, you don’t need to put yourself in danger just because you want to ‘get friendly’ to people who could burn us at the stake as witches” Central immediately urged.

“Firstly, I’m not going to be in danger, I’ll have the three of you and three squads as protection and secondly, we’ll need to reassure them following our… less than stellar entrance. If Tygan is correct and we have travelled between universes then we will need to be especially careful with our approach, after all, we don’t want to cause trouble.”

“And what if we have to?” Central asked.

“We’ll worry about the situation when it comes” The Commander spoke with almost a whisper.

“Right, so, here’s what we are going to do: Us and the aforementioned squads will head for the castle accompanied by new friends outside. We’ll arrange some sort of agreement with whoever is in charge there so that we don’t wind up killing each other immediately. Once that is done we will split up into three groups: Central and I will try and learn more about this place and keep them cordial while we are here, Tygan and his research team will help find out what happened while Shen will head back to the ship and get it airworthy again, we’ll need an exit if things go sour”

“Sounds good to me” Central replied.

“Shen, have you got the PA system working?” The Commander asked

“Just got it working, you should be able to broadcast ship-wide”

“Good, The rest of the people of the ship need to know what’s going on and what we’re going to do”

Central tapped at a few buttons on the central console, the Hologlobe that would be present right at the centre of the bridge itself under any normal circumstances now completely absent, producing mere sparks in its place; “It’s all yours… Commander”

The telltale screech of feedback could be heard throughout the Avenger as he addressed everyone in the ship.

“Attention all hands, we have a Code Purple scenario in play, I repeat, we have a Code Purple, I need everyone to head up to the bridge in an orderly fashion for a full crew meeting to outline a full plan of action, Thank You.”

XCOM had various protocols dealing with anomalous situations ever since the defeat of ADVENT and the repercussions that happened: A Code Green related to unusual natural activity, Code Red related to any form of alien activity, Code Blue related to abnormal political situations, Code Black was reserved only for the worst of the worst events. Fortunately, this was a Code Purple, a freak psionic event.

The Commander turned towards Central, switching between a thumbs-up and thumbs-down gesture, looking for his insight.

“Yeah, you’re doing well, Commander, you worry too much about what these people think of you”, Central replied.

“If you say so”

The bridge began to fill up with people; ever since ADVENT fell many of the Avengers crew simply left, choosing the create new lives as far away from the fighting as could possibly be. What few people remained on the ship stayed for at least one of four reasons: Out of loyalty to XCOM and the cause, Out of desire to see what remnants of ADVENT and their Elders ground to dust, Out of curiosity for knowledge of the aliens or simply because they wanted to kill things. As everyone was present The Commander and Central formed up on the upper level overlooking everyone there, the crew manifests gave a total number: 113 people, soldiers, engineers and scientists alike. The two gathered their notes gathered from the bridge crew and began.

The Commander began his address:

“Okay, everyone, approximately 25 minutes ago at 16:33 hours Engineering detected a massive power spike originating from the Shadow chamber, leading to the creation of a psionic gateway of unprecedented size. The gateway forcibly pulled the Avenger and us with into this location in which we now preside; Central Officer Bradford will now describe what little we know”

Central continued:

“We haven’t yet determined our location, but there is an isolated community of survivors nearby. They don’t appear to have any significant technical knowledge, but they do have access to two captured ADVENT creatures. These things are unlike anything we have seen before and, as unscientific as it sounds… they’re dragons, likely developed as weapons of terror yet likely never got deployed before ADVENT fell.”

The faint sound of muttering could be heard in the back. Several of the Psi Operatives shook their heads in disbelief. Central continued.

“Menace, Fury and Alpha squad will accompany The Commander, Shen, Tygan, The research team and myself to the nearby castle, you’ll escort us there and make sure that everyone is safe while we negotiate with the locals. If things go south, we’ll have the Avenger provide fire support while we evacuate the AO. It is safe to assume they don’t have radio comms so we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way. The research team will be led by Dr. Tygan, you’ll be investigating anomalous activity from within the castle. Investigate the cause and find out if it can benefit our case. Everyone else on the ship will be tasked with putting the ship back in working order, the Engineering crew will help you along with this.”

Tygan rose. “There’s something else. We are working in an optimistic case scenario with this Code Purple scenario. I, along with perhaps a few among yourselves have reason to believe that we are no longer on Earth. If this is indeed the case, then it is probable that we will remain here for an extended amount of time. It is unlikely however and, if all goes well, we should return to HQ without much issue. Until we can confirm either situation, I will defer back to the Commander for additional procedures”

The Commander then got up, clutching a sheet of paper he had written between his PA address and now.

“Now, I would like to stress that these are only temporary rules that will be void either by direct order of myself or once we return back to HQ. Anyway, without further ado:

Firstly, Non-humans, namely Skirmishers and SPARKs are not allowed outside the ship without permission from myself unless XCOM senior staff or the Avenger is under attack; Next, Psi Operatives and Templars are not allowed to use their psionic powers outside of the ship, they must also wear thick clothing to hide their skin features.

Next up, under no circumstances are we to sell or supply these people with our own equipment. If this is a full-scale civilisation than we risk forever changing not only their society but all others in this world in ways that we cannot possibly predict.

Thirdly, we are just visitors in their land, just because they don’t have their own guns or haven’t seen a computer in generations at the least does **not** make us superior or even more knowledgeable. I especially don’t want anyone preaching religious nonsense around here… as a matter of fact, make sure Scorch doesn’t leave the ship. The last thing we need is for our Templar friend to start a cult or worse, a new religion. Are we clear?”

“And lastly, but most importantly, all of you are still under XCOM jurisdiction and you will act as such. If I discover that if any one of you have pillaged, raped or conducted experiments that would even make Dr. Vahlen say ‘Hold the hell up’ then you will be court-martialled as you would be anywhere back home. We are not conquistadors, we don’t do as we please when we please. We are only visitors and we will act as such. I’m talking especially to you, Major Durand! I don’t want a repeat of what happened in New Vancouver!”

Annette slowly tried to retreat from view, that incident happened a year and a half ago and even now it had impacted relations between the restored Canadian government and XCOM. She would have been thrown into prison for life if she weren’t such an asset to the organisation both as an expert on the alien’s political structure and as a powerful psionic.

“Okay then, we all have our objectives, let’s get this done. Dismissed”

All but the bridge crew began to vacate from the room in single file. A small scuffle among two of the lesser-ranked soldiers was quickly snuffed out by Col. Kelly. Before long, the bridge returned to business as usual.

Rodriguez soon reactivated the ship radar before consulting the external cameras to get tabs any other air contacts. Nothing, nothing at all in fact, as far as he could determine, the skies were all but clear.

“Commander, the Dragons have disengaged; I think they’ve gone back to the castle.”

“Well, that’s one immediate issue out of the way for now. We should get going”. The Commander soon left the room, with the other three senior staff soon following.

“Ooh, one more thing, Rodriguez” he said, reaching for his chair, “Could you run an inventory list while we’re gone? Just a precaution in case we’re staying here for the long run”

Menace, Fury and Alpha Squad were already in the Armoury, located in the upper floor of the ship’s stern right next to the Skyranger, the soldiers lightly arming themselves with their personal weapons and more “concealable” pieces of armour. Central grabbed his signature rifle, a large, darkened hunk of metal kitted out with SCOPEs, laser sights and an extended drum mag as well as his sword, a scarlet-red arc blade he kept for those rarer close-range situations.

The Commander simply grabbed a plasma pistol from the drawer before leaving. With the sole exception of the Avatar he controlled during the now-legendary Leviathan Operation which put the final nail in the coffin for ADVENT he almost never fought in direct combat. It was far too risky of an endeavour considering that the Elders pursued him at every turn since he escaped their custody as well as the fact that, for a lack of a better word, was scrawny and weak.

Everyone soon gathered in Engineering, not coincidentally right below the armoury for their “first contact situation”.

“Remember everyone, we’re all friends here so please keep your weapons holstered. We don’t want a diplomatic incident this early in”, The Commander addressed.

“Opening the service bay door now…” Shen announced, withdrawn to her workshop at the back of the bay.

The Commander and Central moved right in front, within breathing distance of the hatch, the cold winds lashing them as the service door opened tentatively.

“How about you leave the sweet talk to me?” Central asked, “If this is as sensitive a situation you’re telling us then it’s definitely not worth going out of your way for”

“Sure, just don’t talk in ‘ye olde speak’ no matter how much you want to” He replied, shielding his face from the sharp winds.

A roaring chant was immediately heard the moment the service door reached the ground, a full line of spears held forward with their tips barely touching the lip of the bay hatch, clutched by a group of warriors clad in leather armour and full-face helmets. Central could only gaze in confusion; these people looked nothing like the classic knights they saw on the cameras, or like any kind of soldier he had seen before, not to mention the fact that their attire was completely ill-suiting for the weather yet none of the fifty soldiers or so did so much as flinch.

“Stand Down” Another soldier moved in front. His armour and horse were muddied from the ground below; he was a well-dressed man with hair almost as dark as the Commanders whilst also having a full, well-trimmed beard. Another man, older, gruffier and wearing patchy, brown fur clothing lined up next to the bearded rider.

“Welcome to Winterfell, my lords”, said the old man, “My name is Sir Davos Seaworth and the good man right beside me is Jon Snow. Our Queen understands your men must have had a rather unpleasant journey and has already made some new arrangements for your arrival if you so desire”

“Thank you very much, Sir Davos” Central replied. “I am Central Officer John Bradford and this… is Commander Waterson, our leader and head of the organisation ‘XCOM’. We would like to learn more about your little kingdom here.” He said.

“Of course,” Jon Snow replied. “May I ask that you turn over your weapons?”

Central responded promptly, throwing his arc blade down onto the ground. The Commander unholstered his pistol, more carefully placing it next to the sword.

“Ahem”, The Commander cleared his throat while nudging Centrals arm, the good man did request for _all_ of their weapons.

“Fine”. He threw his assault rifle on the ground, the two figures exchanging confused looks as he did so. It was clear that Commander wanted some concessions for these people to gain their trust, not the squads however; their weapons would remain on their persons. A pair of spearmen quickly made towards the service ramp to collect them.

“Come, I’ll get you a horse for the trip up ahead. Your soldiers are permitted within the castle walls, but I would ask that they do not enter the main hall while you speak with the Dragon Queen” Jon Snow announced.

“Of course, Thank You” The Commander replied, completely disembarking from the ship.

The rest of the political and scientific team soon followed. They didn’t amount to much, since the re-emergence of the organisation during Operation Gatecrasher XCOM squads were always arranged into squads of six. This combined with the scientific team of about twelve and the number of senior staffs amounted to 34 people for the expedition in total. A pitiful assembly really, they couldn’t match the numbers of the spearmen alone, let alone the other knights they soon found themselves being escorted by. But, as is with XCOM, numbers were never their strong suit, but it was never like it mattered when they brought ADVENT to its knees.

“I think I’ve found a problem with your plan, if I may interject” Central asked.

“And what would that be?” The Commander replied, already trying to figure out the answer in his head.

“Do you even know how to ride a horse?” He quipped, albeit in a completely serious manner. The Commander merely gave an unimpressed glare before moving on.

* * *

** WINTERFELL: SANSA STARK **

The Lady of Winterfell peered out of the chamber windows; her hands, ever twitching in shock, clutching the cold stone with a death grip; the ambient noises drowned out by heavy breathing, her vision almost blurred from stress. The horrors she endured both within Kings Landing and in the very walls of Winterfell itself were one thing, but the total and unrelenting screams emanating from what realm this metal behemoth emerged from were another. It was as if the seven hells themselves opened and demanded fear, and now, whatever spawn emerged from such realms had landed right in front for all the people of the North to see. Only trouble could come from this.

Sansa soon regained her composure as she looked out of the window; she found her brother and his forces beginning to return home, and with company no less. It appeared that there were people in the iron castle and, in addition to the Dothraki, Unsullied and the leagues of other soldiers, advisors and diplomats that Daenerys had brought here, Winterfell was about to receive yet more visitors. Sansa sighed, her breathing had now since returned to normal, the North was about to feed yet more people; this was not a prospect she was looking forward to as she began to leave her chambers, proceeding down the stairs.

The battlements were packed with nobles and commoners alike, each occasionally pushing and shoving each other aside to have a look at the new visitors. Sansa herself had to budge a few wildlings to get a good look, Jons forces were marching in a ring formation, with the Unsullied covering the rear, Houses Mormont and Umber making up the left flank, House Hornwood constituted the right flank and lastly, Jon himself stood in the front accompanied by his own personal guard for the Warden of the North.

The ring was occupied by the visitors; a strange bunch of people in their own right: Their clothes were thick, covered with pouches and adorned with colours that varied greatly between each individual ranging from browns to reds to blues to greens and everything in between. They appeared to carry no weapons beyond the occasional man or woman storing a simple dagger in one of their garment-pouches. Almost all the visitors were on foot, to which was not as significant of an issue considering that the muddy ground had frozen back over; there was only one individual on horseback among the visitors, which after a closer inspection from Lady Sansa turned out to be two. One, presumed to be the rider was old, his greyed beard and scarred face somewhat reminded her of Lord Tyrion… and perhaps also Ser Davos? It wouldn’t matter either way. The other figure was tall, lean, his features plainer yet clearly acting worried most of the time; was he frightened at the crowd? Or was the case that this fool had never learned to ride a horse?

Either way, the only concern running through her mind is who these peculiar people were and whether they would be a threat to the North, it sure seemed so if their entrance had already killed three and inspired fear in the others.

“My Lady”: Her silent judging was interrupted as Lord Tyrion emerged from the crowd.

He positioned himself to get a better look at the bannermen arriving, he had seen many interesting sights: from men of ice to men of fire, stone men and dead men; yet never had he ever seen men from the skies. He’d heard stories of the Winged Men living in the Shadow Lands beyond Yi Ti but this did not fit the description by any means.

“So… The Lady of Winterfell…” Tyrion said, dodging the more immediate topic. “You’ve come a long way from your days as the princess of Kings Landing”

“And you’re once again serving as Hand to the rightful heir, as she is always proclaiming to everyone.” Sansa replied.

“She’ll never be Joffrey. she may have her problems, the Tarly’s can attest to that, but at the very least she will find a proper reason to kill traitors. Speaking of which….”

Sansa sighed, “I do apologise for leaving you in Joffrey’s wedding, it wasn’t good form to-“

“Don’t…” Tyrion interrupted, “While it didn’t help my case that my ‘wife’ conveniently ran following his poisoning I have no doubt Cersei would have had your head on a pike as well as mine, you made the right choice.”

“And yet, according to you, she is now pledging her support to fight against the Army of the Dead” Sansa stated, almost mockingly

“Of course, Varys’ little birds have already told me her time in the throne was already precarious before Daenerys began challenging it. If she would back on her promise now nobles and commoners alike would revolt. Cersei may be spiteful, but she isn’t stupid.”

Sansa didn’t want to dignify his word with a response. She knew his elder sister almost as much as he did from her days in Kings Landing. The mere thought of Cersei on the throne was almost enough to merit a shiver. Sansa instead pointed towards the strange folk, who were now about half a mile from the gate.

“What do you make of this?” Sansa asked

“It’s hard to say, They may have made quite the entrance but it doesn’t look like they have the numbers to take a small village, much less the most prominent castle in the North. It’s fair to say then that conquest is the last thing in their mind”

“And if it is?” Sansa interjected.

“We still outnumber them three thousand to one, they will be dead long before they leave the castle walls if their intentions are anything less than peaceful” Tyrion replied.

“The queen wishes to speak with them?” Sansa queried.

“Of course, she’s summoning the greater lords to give these visitors an audience, with any luck we will gain a new ally for the battle ahead and, if the gods are with us, long after that.” Tyrion answered with doubt.

Sansa sighed, she knew something was very, very wrong with the outsiders. The visitors looked suspiciously unremarkable for people who came from a hole in the sky several of them bore loose and obscuring garments almost as to conceal themselves from the world and, specifically, people like her. If these people came in peace they had something to hide.

“Very well, inform her grace that I will be arriving shortly.”

She left the crowd, briefly being stopped by a different wildling before heading down the stairs into the front entrance of the Great Hall. Most of the Northern lords as well as Grey Worm and several Khalasaars were already present, they barely had time to leave from the previous gathering before the strangers arrived. This, however, was not the case for Lyanna Mormont, the Lady of Bear Island and Yohn Royce, advisor to Robin Arryn and de facto speaker for the Vale who arrived with Sansa not long after she did.

She took her place at the head of the table, seated to the right of the Dragon Queen as was customary. It did not take too long for Jon to arrive, accompanied by four figures who she could safely surmise as the leaders of the mysterious organisation, who congregated at the centre of the hall, for all the lords to see.

In addition to the old man and his tall friend she saw on horseback there were two others that accompanied them. A plain, shaven man who was dark of skin yet wore light and fair clothing who saw behind windows and a shorter woman, bearing the colours of sand and sky on her clothing yet visibly appearing young and old simultaneously. She thought back to the stories that Old Nan told about the mystics of Yi Ti to the far east, about a God-Emperor who lived for ten thousand years, having dominion over life and death itself. Did these people also possess such power?

Her thoughts were interrupted by Missandei of Naath, who began her address to the four on behalf of the Dragon Queen:

“You stand in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, rightful heir to the Iron Throne, rightful Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms, The Mother of Dragons, the Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, The Unburnt and the Breaker of Chains.”

The visitors kept silent for a time, seemingly confused with what they just heard before the tall man simply pointed his outstretched hand forward while clutching his pendant, looking at the old man in the process as though he was reminding him of his job to speak for him. Clearing his throat, he began his address, speaking in a gravelly yet peculiarly accented voice.

“This is Michael Waterson, Commander of the organisation Ex-com and liberator of the Free World, it is thanks to him and the sacrifice of our soldiers that this world is now once again free from the clutches of Advent and the alien menace that-”

Daenerys interrupted him mid-speech “Apologies, Ser…” she outstretched her hand much in the way Ser Waterson did earlier.

“It’s Central Officer John Bradford, there are no ‘Sers’ or ‘Lords’ here in Ex-com, that’s not how things work around here.”

“Okay, Central Officer Bradford, I think I can say with confidence that none of the people in this hall know of you, your people or this ‘Advent’ you speak of. All I know from what I have already seen is that you are a group of renegades that dropped in from the sky and killed three of our men, so let me ask you this once. Where did you come from, and why are you here?”

Michael Waterson stepped up for the now-confused Central Officer: “Apologies, your majesty, you’ll have to forgive Mister Bradford’s theatrics as we are all a bit confused as to what has transpired here. To answer the easier question and, to put it simply, we are from another world. A land that no man can walk to, no boat can find its shores and no dragon that can fly there. It was a decent world, it had its ups and downs, sure, but the point was that we, and we alone stood as its protectors from foul creatures that came from the void. Sure, it took twenty years and thousands of lives, but we succeeded.”

He clapped his hands together, rubbing them in a more anxious manner.

“As for your other question, we were hoping you could help us with that regard, whatever dragged us to this world did so against our will; this is why we have come before you, we need your assistance to find out what happened and to help us get home.”

Jon Snow responded almost immediately.

“I appreciate your hospitality but right now you have come at a dangerous time. Right now, an army larger than anything this world has ever seen is marching south. An army that doesn’t cower behind walls or leave corpses behind. The Dead are coming, Ser Waterson, and the White Walkers care not for alliances or kingdoms and who is protecting who. We are nothing more than fresh meat for their ranks to them.”

“Oh?” Michael asked.

“We have already received ravens from Eastwatch that the Wall has already fallen. A hundred thousand wights, consisting of fallen men, giants, mammoths and snow bears. Even a dragon is now flying among their ranks. The Night King will not relent, he will not stop before every man, woman and child has fallen in his ranks, including the people in your ship.” Jon spoke, his voice being increasingly stressed as time progressed.

“That’s a lot to take in.” Michael responded. “So, to recap, an army of dead people are marching south to kill us all, they have a dead dragon in their ranks and, I presume, you are requesting the support of our troops to destroy them”

“I’m sorry, but do you take me for a liar, Ser Waterson? The Army of the Dead is real. I have seen them, The Queen has seen them, half of the very people standing here have seen them and if you-“ Jon spat, his frustration becoming palpable as, time and time again he found himself trying to convince people about the threat that came. He lost brothers of the Watch, he lost friends, he even lost a dragon convincing people the Dead were coming, he never wanted this to happen again.

“Calm down, Jon” Michael interjected: “I’m not doubting the existence of this army of the dead for a second. If I’m honest, it doesn’t sound even close to the most ridiculous thing myself or my men have encountered in our times. Either way, you have our support.”

John Bradford immediately faced Michael, he began to whisper almost to regular speaking in protest. He whispered in reply with almost louder speaking, devolving to almost silent argument. Jon ignored the Central Officers protesting, breathing a sigh of relief that he didn’t have to convince yet another group of people about the White Walkers.

“Thank you, Ser Waterson. How many men can we expect from you” Jon asked.

Michael silenced his second in command to help answer the question: “I’ll have an additional two squads join us to the castle, making up a total of thirty soldiers to help defend the-“

“Thirty men?!” Sansa protested. “Please correct me in case I have got something wrong but, from your flying castle which I am sure can hold a thousand men, you are only sending in thirty soldiers, most of which can’t even ride a horse. Please forgive me, Ser Waterson but you may as well have said you have no interest in helping us.”

Michael Waterson responded, without losing an inch of composure.

“First of all, Miss….” He gestured to her, requesting her name

“Sansa of House Stark” she happily replied, “Lady of Winterfell and sister to the Warden of the North”

“Okay, **Lady** Stark. Firstly, as Central Officer Bradford had mentioned before, there are no Sers or Lords here. Our world hasn’t even seen a proper king or monarch in hundreds of years. Secondly, and something you must understand, Lady Stark, is that our soldiers are nothing like the sword-swingers and stick-slingers that constitute your armies. We fight from afar with advanced and complex weapons powerful enough to shatter rock; each soldier of Ex-com can inflict more destruction than a hundred infantrymen of your world. So, along those lines we have brought what amounts to a small army, it’s not much, but supported by your men it should be enough to send this Army of the Dead back from whence they came.”

“Perhaps against people”, Jon began, “But I must advise this. From our previous experiences fighting the White Walkers, there are only two things that can destroy the Dead, and that either by burning them, or with dragonglass”

“Dragonglass?”

“The maesters call it obsidian.”

“Obsidian?”

Jon sighed. “It’s a blackened-“

“No, I know what obsidian is”, Michael interjected, “What is it about obsidian that destroys the Dead?”

“I don’t know, the only thing that is important is that we can make weapons out of it and we have enough to supply our armies with them. I guess now that as your forces are joining us, we will need to give your soldiers what they need”

“I don’t think we will have too much trouble” Michael gestured to the odd woman to his left. “Shen, do you think you could send a few engineers to help with that regard and perhaps help fortify the castle too if they have the time? I’m sure we can teach these people a thing or two about castle fortifications”

The woman replied: “Once we get the Avenger in working order again, it shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll have a few of my staff headed to the castle to oversee the defences, see if we can get a few more hands to help.”

“The Avenger?” Daenerys asked.

“Yeah, that’s what we call our ship outside. It’s been through quite a journey over its lifetime. While it began its life ferrying troops and supplies for the enemy we remade it into a home, a command centre and a weapon of war, and all of this would be possible were it not for our Chief Engineer, Lily Shen” Waterson stated, his arm outstretched towards Shens direction.

“Sounds like you have quite the story to tell.” Daenerys complimented.

“I could say the same for you too” Michael responded. “I don’t think anyone with titles like ‘Breaker of Chains’, or ‘Mother of Dragons’ wouldn’t be the least bit interesting. I hope we can learn much from each other over the coming days. So, my proposal is simple; We will provide the support of our soldiers and our engineers in the war against the Dead; and in return, once the immediate threat is dealt with, you will provide the resources necessary to take us home.”

Daenerys looked towards Jon, their eyes meeting for a moment on how to approach the mans proposal. She felt reluctant at first, these people would be invaluable in her bid to sit the Iron Throne, especially considering how there would inevitably be losses on her side from the battle to come. This was not an easy decision.

They whispered to each other, discussing the best course of action. Jon advised against trying to get them to bend the knee. It was already difficult forcing Jon himself to do so, especially considering how the North was not as willing to accept her as queen. No, she wouldn’t make the same mistake twice, she would prove to X Com that she was the ideal queen for the throne, no conditions necessary. She nodded to Jon, giving him her approval for the deal.

“It will be done.” Jon began: “And when the Long Night has come to an end, when the realms of men are once again safe on our world, I would follow your men to your lands myself to make sure that the debt is repaid, Michael Waterson”

“Please, you can just call me ‘Commander’ like all my friends”, Michael replied, a grin now covering his face.

“Well, if there is nothing more to discuss I think we can adjourn this meeting. Your people are free to roam the castle and I’ll have Ser Davos return your weapons.” Dany addressed

“There is one other thing-” the Dark man queried.

“Ah, this is Doctor Richard Tygan” Commander Waterson quickly interjected, “He’s our research leader, basically he is responsible for advance our organisations knowledge in matters of weapons, armour, medicine, transportation, archiving and everything in between. Sorry; carry on, Doctor”

“I would ask if it be possible to have our researchers access the castle libraries and scrolls to see if there are any mentions of magic in your records? We have reason to believe that some of the more… mystical elements of your world will be of great assistance in determining how we got here.”

“Of course.” Jon responded, “I would also suggest speaking to my brother, Bran, about his knowledge of magic. He’s… special, for the lack of a better word, I’m sure he’ll be more than happy to help. As for official records, I’ll have my good friend Samwell share what he has found from his time in the Citadel.”

“Thank you, Lord Snow”. Tygan thanked, his gaze turned toward his superior before returning forward.

“Now, if there is nothing else, my lords. You are dismissed; the longer we wait, the less time we can prepare. Go now, Ex-com; begin your studies, let us all hope you find more than merely a way home.”

Ser Davos returned to the hall, carrying a large sack filled with the weapons she was talking about before, bringing them to the four. Commander Waterson pulled out a small weapon, briefly inspecting it before concealing the item. It was curved and sleek, composed of a metallic, blue material that showed neither seams, holes nor even tool marks; what mysterious means they used to forge these weapons could only fall within the realms of imagination.

The four denizens of the Avenger left the Great Hall afterwards, their weapons stowed away behind their backs. The other lords and ladies absconded not too long after, speaking amongst themselves with various tones of voice, some quiet and collected, some loud and angered.

It wasn’t long before only Sansa remained in the Great Hall, gazing out as to what just happened. Was that all? This great force that came crashing down, and now threw themselves up to break bread with her people? She thought back to what Littlefinger taught her in a failed attempt to turn her on her sister:

“Sometimes, when I try to understand a person’s motives; I play a little game, I assume the worst.” She reasoned, what could be the worst possible reason this so-called ‘Ex-com’ could have for allying with the Dragon Queen? Granted, they said that they never wanted to be here, but what do they have to gain from this alliance? They did seem short on numbers as she pointed out earlier, maybe they came to recruit new people to their so-called war.

“It’s not enough”, she reasoned. She had to know more about these people, if they didn’t co-operate and give what she wanted, she could just have them killed using whatever methods she desired, it needn’t matter. The North remembers what happens when strangers arrive at their gates, and she was determined not to repeat the mistakes of her father.

* * *

** WINTERFELL: CHIEF ENGINEER LILY SHEN **

“Just give me a damn moment” she uttered, the tapping on her personal tablet becoming increasingly irritated as the people around her were trying to draw her attention. She had Rover run physical scans on the engines to check for any signs of damage the ships own diagnostics may have missed.

“Please? This is extremely important, and I don’t want this going to the other engineers!” a male voice asked.

“Can it wait? I’ve got some diagnostics to carry out to make sure that the engines are okay.”

“No, If the Commander is having us stay in this shit heap of a castle then at least let us know if our personal logs survived the crash. The rest of Fury Squad are already getting agitated and if we’re to stay here until the zombie threat is over, at least give us something to pass the time. I’d consult the rest of engineering but I’m sure those IT geeks would mess with them, I don’t want to see yet another pages worth of dicks scrawled all over my recollections of Operation Summer Night or anywhere else.”

Shen sighed. Colonel Edgardo “Scipio” Salvetti never took “No” for an answer ever since he assumed de facto command of Fury Squad following the death of his predecessor in Kinshasa after she fell to Sectopod fire. He was the third person to take such a mantle and, in the months since he went out of his way to maintain the morale of Fury Squad.

“I’ll have your logs sent through as soon as possible, although I am sure you’re aware the ship is my priority. You really need to take these requests to someone else, I’m sure that there’s at least one person in the Engineering team that can play nice.”

“Do it, or The Commander will make sure you never forget about it.”, Scipio pressured, trundling off to the city walls afterwards. His frustration almost being palpable.

“Keep hassling me and I’ll draw the dicks myself”. Shen threatened.

She soon left the castle walls and began to head back towards the ship, the bitter cold winds almost piercing her coat. The castles denizens gradually getting back to work moving what appeared to be wooden stakes into the trench that extended wholly around the castle yet resided barely twenty metres from the walls themselves.

“Lady Shen?” A relatively large, blonde-haired woman clad in sapphire-blue armour approached her as she exited the main camp, the sunlight somewhat hampering the vision of both parties.

“Please, you heard the Commander as much as I did, we don’t have ‘Ladies’ as a title, granted, it’s more of a compliment than anything else.”

“Apologies. My name is Brienne of Tarth, royal protector of Lady Sansa Stark. I would ask that if it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I would like to accompany you to your ship. Lady Sansa has shown a particular interest in your organisation.”

“Who isn’t?” Shen remarked. “You know, if she was so interested, she would have come herself. Whatever, sure, you can come along. However, the Commander has forbidden anyone not affiliated with XCOM to enter the ship, he’s concerned that some of the more…. Exotic aspects of our organisation will inspire panic among your people”

“Exotic?” Brienne queried, “I do apologise, Lily, but I find it difficult to surprise us at this moment. Your people came from the sky after an army of dragons, eunuchs and horse lords arrived to protect us from an army of dead men.”

“You would be surprised, some of our men are… unique, for the lack of a better word. The Commander doesn’t believe that your people will react well to these individuals. Hell, how well are your people reacting to the dragons alone? I mean, before we came?”

“About as well as you might expect. Westeros hasn’t seen a dragon in over a hundred years, let alone two of them. The Targaryens united this continent with these creatures, and now they have since returned to claim what is theirs.”

“What do you mean ‘A hundred years’, are you saying these dragons aren’t native to this place?”

“Both House Targaryen and the dragons they take from their sigil can be traced back to Old Valyria, an ancient a great empire, they say. At least before the Doom, I don’t know much more about the subject matter, I would suggest speaking to the Queen or any of the maesters if you want to know more.”

Shen immediately pulled out her communicator, quickly stopping in her tracks to address this new information.

“Commander?”

“Shen, speak to me.” The Commander asked through the intercom.

“Have you spoken to Daenerys yet?”

“No, I’ve got this weird chick constantly following me and going back and forth between ‘Betray us and I’ll cut your throat myself’ and ‘You’re so interesting, can you tell me more about your people?’, it’s pissing me off to no end.”

“Well, next time you see her, see if you can make a mention of a ‘Valyria’, I think we have a lead.”

“Okay, uh… ‘Val….’ Sorry, how do you spell it?”

Shen faced Brienne, her communicator maintaining an open channel.

“Sorry, how do you spell it?”

“V-A-L-Y-R-I-A”, Brienne instructed to the speaker, immediately aware of its function.

“Thanks, I’ll see to it as soon as possible, just once I find a way to stop this girl from hassling me every two seconds!”

“Go ahead, I’ll make sure the ship will be ready for you”

Shen pulled the connection, pocketing the communicator while turning back to the lady-knight. By this time they were within breathing distance of the service ramp.

“Thank you for your company and assistance, Brienne, But I must get back to work. This ship is my entire life’s work and all I care about right now is to make sure it can fly again”

“Wait, what am I supposed to say to Lady Sansa? I cannot return to her empty-handed.”

Shen groaned in frustration, if these people were going to be this pushy throughout their entire stay here in this “Westeros”, then there was going to be problems for both sides.

“You’ve already seen enough, tell your Lady Sansa Stark that if she wants to learn about us, she should ask us herself. We don’t, and never have, spoken to the middlemen in any kind of diplomacy. Now go, before I inform the Commander there’s an intruder on the ship.”

Brienne moved away, almost storming off back to the castle. Her concerns were the least of Lily’s thoughts; even before they wound up on another reality, the Avenger was in a sorry state. Ever since ADVENT was defeated, the newly restored governments of Earth found little use for the Avenger, not since the deep space scanners found nothing worth investigating. The ship was the life’s work not only of Lily but her father as well, the latter of which even died not only to restore the ship, but to stop it falling back into the enemy’s hands.

Of course, it would be a cold day in hell before Lily would let her ship fall to disrepair. Even in the absence of orbital readings, she was insistent on making the Avenger spaceworthy again, serving as the first line of defence for if or when the aliens ever decided to knock on their front door ever again, with enough armaments to level a city. Not that it mattered anymore in a place that could stone people to death for having a computer, not to mention that even the blaster racks on the ship were complete.

Only SPARK-001, confusingly nicknamed “Spark”, was present to meet her as she walked back up the service ramp, his mechanical body almost entirely covered in mud, which had since frozen over in the cold weather, a few of the engineering crew were slouched over the cargo bay, worked to exhaustion trying to unclog the landing gear.

“Spark, give me a sitrep, how long before we can get the ship working again?”

“Landing legs 1 and 3 cleared of debris and partial clearance of Landing leg 2. Hydraulic failure detected in in Landing leg 4. All essential flight systems have been restored and are fully functional. Blaster Rack 3 has sustained significant damage, Blaster Rack 2 is inoperable. Significant electrical damage remains within the Shadow chamber” said the SPARK, its monotone voice barely audible behind the wind.

“Very well, I’ve detected a series of cracks present in Engine 2’s turbines from Rovers telemetry. Please order your BIT to conduct repairs to the structure and run physical diagnostics on the other three”

“Affirmative”

The SPARK returned to the ship, its Bit companion breaking off to carry out the necessary repairs. Lily carried downwards to the service bays in the lowest of the floors, she navigated through its almost labyrinthine hallways, trying her best to avoid any potentially loose cables or pipes in the tight and dimly lit spaces.

By the time she arrived at the service area of Landing Leg 2, little more than a tiny room with a series of hydraulic arms filling up the roof and on the landing leg. Pratal Mox was just clearing through the last of the mud, his sharpened claws grinding the frozen mud to dust while Julian, its red paint almost completely stripped from its metal arms; Julian came a long way from its senseless murder of ADVENT employees back when it was a disembodied, yet unshackled AI.

“It is good to see you, Lily Shen. We have succeeded in dislodging the soil from this landing leg, you may retract the gear on your command once we have cleared the room.” Said Mox, his deep voice breaking from the cold seeping in from below.

“Thanks, Mox, any of the operatives give you any trouble?”

“Not as of yet, it would appear that our present circumstances have drawn their focus away from attempting, as they would say, to ‘pick on me’. I am fortunate for this because it is difficult to work under constant vigilance from your brothers in battle.”

“Good, good, once you’re done, could you check in with Engineer Sigfried and let him know that I need to see him as soon as possible? We’ll meet at the Ring in 5 minutes, bring Firebrand and yourself in as well. I need to speak with both of you about the ships defense.”

“I will do that” Mox replied, putting his signature helmet that all Skirmishers wore back on.

“I helped too, you know!” Julian spoke, the SPARK grasping the edge of the bay hatch.

“Sure you did, now go find your SPARK friend in the cargo bay and have your BIT assist in engine repairs, we need this thing airborne on the double”

“Of course, **Lily** , I am so glad to serve by your side, Lily.” Julian humoured.

“Sass me again and I’ll just have one of my existing AIs repossess your body. You belong to us, Julian, and the only reason you’re still around is because I’m allowing it. Do not give me a reason to purge you from existence, no more than what you already did with Darkstrider in that facility”

“Please, he couldn’t kill a glass of milk and you know that”, Julian mocked. “Darkstrider was a pathetic manchild and you should consider yourself lucky he died with those rusted tin cans in that facility.”

Shen merely gave a deathly glance as a response before storming out. She took the service elevator to the first floor of the ship. Ever since the defeat of ADVENT, the Avenger had several of its less essential floors renovated and restructuring to suit Shen’s needs of converting the ship for war in space. Most of this was directed towards the lower, ground floor, where the rooms were converted into additional armouries, storage space for an entire army’s worth of guns, grenades, blaster bombs and anything in between. Even with this, however, the renovations to the ground floor were far from complete due to the Chief Engineers more ambitious plans for converting the Avenger into a warship.

The first floor remained largely unchanged from its days at the resistance. The Proving ground remained largely unchanged from its initial construction a full month since the Commanders re-emergence as well as the now-uninhabitable Shadow Chamber. However, the Psi Chamber had to be disassembled and relocated from the Ground floor to the first floor; replacing the various comms relays had had formed the famed resistance network that existed before, a feature since obsolete since the restoration of pre-war governments.

Shen found only one person in the psi chamber. The volcanic purple veins, glowing eyes and almost brightly white skin of Collin “Scorch” Matterson. His meditating creating a very discernible and disturbing glow from his body. Matterson was one of the highest in the Templars ranks, electing to stay only as an envoy to Geist himself, yet even so, he was more than welcome to XCOM; with his unhinged knowledge being rivalled only by the unhinged destruction he could lay on the battlefield.

“Hey, I need your help with something we found in the castle.”

“What is it you seek?” Scorch asked.

“I need to know what you can see, or I guess sense, about this individual here. Both the Commander and Tygan have reason to believe that she might be psionically sensitive, I am not as sure, which is why”. Shen handed him her tablet, the screen displaying a picture of Daenerys that she managed to get through after the meeting.

“Why do you ask questions to which you already know the answer to?” Scorch asked.

“Because I’m not a scientist or a deranged priest! I just need to know that it isn’t a complete coincidence that we’ve landed in a castle with abnormal psionic signatures that just so happens to be lead by a silver-haired, purple-eyed queen with a posse of dragons”

“As you wish, Lily Shen.” Scorch began, standing up from the pedestal, “Psionic energy courses through all worlds, not just that of both our own and this new realm to which we now preside, but in every realm, all living and breathing together as one in the Aether. The powers from beyond appear to have bestowed the Gift upon this woman, brightening her hair just as your own soldiers had under your own training processes.”

“The powers beyond? What are you talking about?”

“The power of the Aether knows no bounds, it is all around us; residing in and around realities themselves. How do you think we travelled here?”

“I know about the stupid Aether! You Templars can’t shut up about it every two seconds! Just for once, what do you mean by the ‘Powers beyond?!’ is it the Aether in general or are there things living in there?” Shen shouted, throwing the tablet on the ground in anger.

“All will be explained in due time, Lily. It is important, however, that I must join in the castle’s defence against the Great Other. For if we are to survive, the threat of the White Walkers must be stopped, the fate of two worlds are at stake and when they come, I must-”

“No, absolutely not! I’m not having you, or any of your so-called BFFs preach your quackery in this world and neither will anyone else on this ship. If you dare leave this ship, I’ll have you shot on sight!” Shen spat, her anger almost palpable at the purple-highlighted operative.

“YOU CANNOT KEEP ME HERE! THEY MUST KNOW, THE LIVES OF BILLIONS IS AT STAKE!!”

Shen ran out of the Psi chamber before Scorch could lay a hand on her. Templars were notorious for harbouring unstable behaviours, most particularly Geist, who showed particularly zealous and somewhat scary attitudes both from his life on the run and as a result of XCOMs earliest experiments in psionics in the first few weeks of the war. Even so, there was little to suggest that anything about their organisation was against the best interests of humanity, albeit for reasons that many among the new nations deemed less than pleasant.

Lily went up a ladder to the second floor, an area almost completely unchanged since the fall of ADVENT, areas such as the Resistance Ring, which had found new purpose as a negotiating table for XCOMs other allies; the Guerrilla Tactics School, a training area for the soldiers and the Infirmary, always the integral part of the ship that it always was.

It was a short wait before Wolfgang Siegfried, her second-in-command, arrived. The occasional skip in his step resulting from his scars back from when he was bailed from the ADVENT prison in Trier, an operation courtesy both from Menace squadron and from the Spokesman. Fortunately for XCOM, it was one of the few operations in where the soldiers didn’t get so much as a scratch. Unfortunately for Siegfried, the same could not have been said for him, perhaps if that one Muton had aimed a few centimetres off, one way or the other, he wouldn’t have had forever been confined to a walking stick everywhere he went. Even so, Siegfried’s ingenuity both weapons production and maintenance proved invaluable.

“What’s the news on the situation?” Siegfried asked, his German accent almost completely absent yet still oddly pronounced in his voice.

“The Commander has negotiated some sort of alliance with the locals. They should help provide us with the manpower and resources necessary to help us devise the return trip home, but…”

“They want something in return?”

“You could say that, they asked us to help them fight a horde of ice zombies that are apparently ‘invading’ this place. I couldn’t get a word in before the Commander immediately threw us in their ranks. This means, unfortunately, that we’ll need to get the ship ready for battle earlier than we thought.”

“Shen, we’ll be lucky if we can even get the Blaster racks to work! The retrofits you have requested aren’t even close to done, it’s going to take a couple of weeks just to link the turrets targeting computers alone.”

“What about the GOBLINs? Can’t we use them to obtain real-time information on the zombie army’s position, perhaps use them to harass their ranks in the process?”

“The GOBLINs aren’t even in the prototype stages yet! All we have is an elerium pulsejet, a few circuit boards scattered around the ship and the plans for the GOBLIN frame, that’s it. You can’t expect me to snap my fingers and throw UAVs all around the airspace.”

“Then skip the weapon hardpoints and GPS transponder, we’re on the clock here.”

Their arguing was interrupted by the entry of Mox and Firebrand, the latter of which clutching a wrench, her blonde hair and face stained with oil marks.

“Oh yes, Amy, How is the Skyranger doing?”

“Not too bad, she was pretty roughed up in the crash, I’ve had to spend the entire day fixing the coolant tubes and rebooting the avionics suites, I’ve actually got Engineer Papadopoulos on the bird now running more diagnostics. Still, so long as nothing else goes wrong I should have it airworthy by tomorrow.”

“And the retrofits?”

“Lily, there’s a reason your father designed the Skyranger the way it is. He never meant for to give her any more than what was absolutely necessary; It won’t be easy to modify the craft to accommodate what you’re looking for.”

“Can it be done?”

Amy sighed, she knew the Skyranger for years, practically living alongside it ever since it was naught but scrap metal. She knew the ins and outs of it and what was and wasn’t possible.

“Yes, I think we might have to pull out the nose gear to accommodate it but it could work, though I’d be a liar to say that it wouldn’t have adverse effects besides having to build a new set of landing gear legs. Either way, the ship would have to be out for a couple of weeks if you want these retrofits to take place”

“I guess that will have to wait” Lily mumbled. “I need you to take care of something once you get the thing airborne”

“What’s up?”

“The locals have been up and down about a so-called ‘Army of the Dead’ that’s headed for the castle, from the accounts of one ‘Jon Snow’, this force can reanimate anything with a pulse, he said that they’ve already got undead polar bears, mammoths and dragons already.”

“So? Correct me if I am wrong, but we won’t be anywhere close to here when this battle will come.”

“I know, but if the worst come to worst, the last thing we need is undead aliens running amok in the ship. I need you, Mox and three others to take all the corpses on the ship and bury them as deep as you can? Some of the local maps provided have found a spot about twenty clicks east. Get there, bury the corpses and cover them in stone boulders for good measure.”

“Okay…. can you provide me and the others an inventory list so we can go through them as thoroughly as possible? I’d hate to see a zombie cryssalid rampaging through because we hadn’t gone through the ship well enough.”

“Sure, go to Rodriguez and let him know I sent you, he should be able to provide you the most recent list, I overheard the Commander ask him about the same thing.”

“Okay, let me know if there’s anything else you need or if you want me to ferry anything else.”

Amy soon left the ring with Mox following soon after, Siegfried was just about to get off his seat before promptly being stopped by his superior.

“One more thing, The Commander has requested that, once we get the Avenger flying again, we have a few of our engineering crew stay behind to set up forti-“

“No.” Siegfried interrupted, “I’m not going to a place where I am not only forced to shit into a bucket and get hassled, but that I cannot oversee the GOBLINs construction, take care of the retrofits that you’re so damn adamant about and run maintenance on the infantry weapons. No, not going to happen, go find another errand boy.”

“Okay, I get it, I wasn’t even going to ask you personally, all I wanted was for you to get to your colleagues and ask if they want to volunteer. If nobody does, then give them a good enough reason to get out there; I dunno, offer them a bratwurst or whatever in exchange. I don’t care how, just make sure it gets done.”

“And you can’t do it yourself because….”

“Because, as far as I’m concerned, this ship is the only thing to me right now. Waterson can play saviour all he wants, but I’m not having him destroy this ship and our home on my watch, and the sooner we can get this bird armed and dangerous, the better. I want every assurance that I can strip this castle down to the molecular level with the snap of my fingers if those mud-lickers do so much as lay a finger on our men.”

“If you say so. I should get going then.” Said Siegfried, his accent almost thickening for a second.

“Go ahead, Wolf, dismissed.”

Siegfried trundled out of the ship, his walking stick adding a somewhat ominous thump to his step.

Lily instantly slouched on her chair the second she reached Engineering, beginning to cycle through her various plans. Even from a young age, Shen’s idea of resting still consisted of doing work. In one occasion even the Commander had to step up when she barely slept for a whole week both in the run-up to Operation Leviathan and a few days after, with many an hour at night spent quadruple-checking the Avatar link and the various Shadow Chamber systems so as for any one of the systems to not malfunction mid-way through. It took a 5-minute monologue from Central and the threat of a tranquiliser gun to try and get her to settle down, after which she almost broke down into tears after discovering she had slept for twelve hours.

She roved through the various project files. XCOM had archived all of its projects, both research and construction projects, each with assigned codenames. Such examples included “Geller” for their renewed Psionics programme, “Verdun” for their initial prototypes and eventual full-scale production of plasma weapons and, most particularly, “Primarch” for their autopsy of their first recovered Avatar, the vain attempt by the Ethereals to grant new bodies to their own withering forms.

She kept an eye on the recent projects centred around the Avenger’s retrofits, themselves divided into various sub-projects with their own objectives:

“Melkor”: The prototyping and deployment of the GOBLIN platform.

“Gjallarhorn”: The mounting and integration of heavy weapons on the Avenger’s frame, including turrets and Blaster racks.

“Paradiso”: The restoration of the Avenger’s spacefaring capabilities.

“Innsmouth”: The investigation and salvage of technologies present in the wreckage of the ocean facility breached in Leviathan.

The notes gathered from each of these projects each required their own innovations and breakthroughs to even get out of the design phase. Until Gjallarhorn there was neither a demand to modify the Avengers layout on the fundamental scale nor a demand to fabricate whole components in large scale. Until Melkor there was no demand to develop a miniaturised elerium jet. Until Innsmouth, there was no demand to develop materials resistant to psionic energy.

Shen found something else however, a project file deceptively hidden in the Innsmouth section, yet this was something independent. Her confusion began as none of the engineering or research crew as far as she was aware of had created such a thing. A wholly new research project developed seemingly without permission of Research or Engineering with the codename "Milton", as to what that even meant was entirely up for debate. She pressed on the file on her tablet, she was one of the highest-ranking members of XCOM, surely she would have access to…

“ACCESS DENIED”

“What?” she shouted. What could possibly exist in the bowels of XCOM that is so shady and dangerous that not even its own leaders could know about? As far as she was aware, only two possibilities existed that could explain this. Either one of the lesser crew had self-taught and created a highly encrypted project file, creating 12-7 as some sort of personal project for themselves; or it was created by none other than the Commander himself, using his superior credentials to prevent anyone else from accessing it.

She could only hope that the latter was not the case.

* * *

** WINTERFELL: TYRION LANNISTER **

“Will the Queen be joining us?” Ser Davos asked, having just sat in the warmly lit council chambers of the Great Keep, the stone walls emanating a comfortable, yet eerie warmth from below, a curious feeling he had not felt since his days in Dragonstone, when he served as Hand to the enemy of the man sitting right in front of him.

“Regrettably not, it would appear right now that she would prefer the company of the common people. It would be wise to start now while the sunset is still a way away. So, I guess we should begin.” Tyrion replied with almost a whisper to his voice. He had lost sleep the previous night with what sounded like thunder coming from the Wolfswood.

“My birds have recently informed me that Cersei Lannister has hired a company of sellswords that has since made landfall in the capital. They tell me that the Golden Company are some twenty thousand strong and, at least for now, are ‘keeping the peace’, arresting or otherwise killing anyone that may dare to start a riot” Varys started, his robes

“Do you know anything of their movements? Should we expect their assistance by the time the Dead come here?” Tyrion asked.

“I’m afraid I don’t know, Cersei has the city watch looking over every corner of Kings Landing, it’s simply too dangerous right now for my birds to gather more information, especially with the Golden Company helping with that regard”

“Varys is right to be concerned” Ser Jorah Mormont spoke, “The Golden Company is one of the greatest mercenary companies in Essos, all of them battle hardened under the hundreds of contracts they have fulfilled over the years that they have existed. If they are under contract from Cersei they must have good reason to do so.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t the Golden Company created by a member of House Blackfyre to support the rebellions that are their namesakes? Do you think they may be hiding another claimant to the throne?” Ser Davos asked with curiosity, he had learned about the Blackfyre rebellions when the late Shireen Baratheon taught him to read for his lord.

“House Blackfyre was completely extinguished during the War of the Ninepenny Kings some forty years ago. I believe our late friend; Ser Barristan Selmy had seen to that matter personally. Besides, Aegor Rivers was not a member of House Blackfyre; he was only half-brother to Daemon Blackfyre, First of his name.” Varys answered.

Tyrion had a moment to think to himself. If his sister had kept the capital under lock and key it would be difficult to know her intentions, even with the incredibly adept spymaster Varys. He had to think of another strategy, and quickly. Perhaps something to ponder after the meeting?

“Let me know if your little birds are up to something, it is imperative that we know what is going on in the capital” Tyrion stated. He turned back to Ser Davos: “How are our recent arrivals doing” he asked while pouring himself a goblet of water. Arrangements for the nobles had been somewhat shaken since Jon had ordered all the handmaidens to assist in fortifying the castles, with most of them throwing up dragonglass spikes up on the ramparts while others spent their time fashioning dragonglass spears. Nonetheless, considering the one occasion when he was sold as a slave, he had been through much worse.

“As their illustrious commander promised, Ex-com have sent an additional twelve soldiers to the castle, what few there are have set up a camp near the Wolfswood” Davos replied.

“It is insulting how little they have sent. Our queen has risked her own ambitions and our lives to fight this army of the dead and these creatures send only thirty of theirs?!” Grey Worm spat, disgusted. “I say we kill them where they stand and take what is theirs for our own”

“It is too dangerous” Tyrion dismissed. “They may not have the numbers, but if we try to march on them we’d risk losing too many lives for something that we may not even be able to use for long before the dead arrive.”

“Lord Tyrion is right” Ser Davos continued. “We don’t know what lies in that ship of theirs, damaged or not. We won’t be coming across as ‘Men of the People’ if we end up slaughtering our own allies for gains that we likely wouldn’t be able to enjoy for long”

“The fact that we know very little about their so-called ‘Avenger’ is more true than you think” Varys replied, “I have already tried four times over to send my birds to garner more information and four times they have been caught and threatened to be, and I quote, ‘Blasted into the Stone Age’, before being sent back. It seems that despite our hospitality, our new allies still intend to leave us in the dark. Hardly surprising given their nature as peoples who can use magic such as it is”. He spoke sternly, his classic robes almost shaking in frustration.

“I am sure they will reveal all in due time. Look at how the common folk are looking at our own leader, her dragons the likes of which haven’t been seen for hundreds of years. Now, if you will, imagine how the people of Ex-com, with their strange weapons, customs, clothing and creeds would look to them, I have already a few of the common folk refer to them as demons in the short time they have been here. Commander Waterson is being tentative, and he has every reason to do so at this stage.”

“How would you suggest that we learn about them?” Missandei of Naath asked, standing almost to attention in her chair with an eerie stillness.

“If we add the twelve new arrivals that Davos mentioned then Ex-com have 42 people walking among us in the castle. I say we listen to what they have to say, we all have our own tales of tragedy, suffering and hardship. If what they say is true, having recently recovered from a war of their own, then they have their own stories. I say the best way to know them is to ask; granted, some of them will keep their secrets, but not everyone is a Master of Whispers. Do you think you can do that?”

“Of course, our queen would have asked the same of us were she to join us” Missandei replied.

“Very well, if that is everything we need to discuss?”

“There is one more matter.” Varys spoke. “A raven came in from Riverrun this morning from House Mallister, they report that they had laid siege to the Twins and had released Edmure Tully from the custody of House Frey. He now rules once again as Lord Paramount of the Trident and has declared for Daenerys, he has already sent for five thousand men along with two thousand bushels of wheat and a thousand pigs and cattle to serve as provisions to help us last until the Dead arrive”

“Stark, Tully, Arryn. All we need is a Baratheon and it’s Robert’s Rebellion all over again.” Davos joked.

“If only poor Robert were alive to witness this” Tyrion mused. “Twenty years ago, the great forces of the North, Vale and Riverlands marched south to Kings Landing to depose a Targaryen. Now, assuming the Dead don’t kill us all, they will be marching south again to appoint one. Seems poetic, don’t you think.”

“Times change.” Varys merely replied as the rest of the council began to disperse. Grey Worm had already vacated the room with Missandei and Jorah following not long after. Davos left not long after a momentary pause, Varys was about to follow before Tyrion stopped him.

“Varys, I know it may be hard to understand, and I am still well aware about your reservations about magic and people who practice it.”

“Then you already know these people are dangerous. Imagine how the Children of the Forest felt when they first saw the metal swords and shields of the First Men, or the First Men when they saw the mounted knights and the steel of the Andals, or basically anyone when they first saw dragons fly above their shores. And now it is our turn to fall before these people.”

“You doubt their intentions?”

“Their intentions are of little relevance, I don’t think Aenar Targaryen had conquest in his mind when his boats first landed on Dragonstone yet, not two generations later Aegon brought the Seven Kingdoms to his heel. It matters not what a father built a house for if his son makes it into a brothel.”

“So, you think that the people of Ex-Com are a threat to the safety of the realm”

“Well, it’s hard to say about the people themselves and what they want, but it does not matter. Winter has come, and even if the Dead do not kill us all the people will still starve, one way or another; and allow me to remind you what John Bradford had said in the Queens own presence. Ex-com, as far as the common people are aware, are living proof that people can live comfortable and plentiful lives in a realm without lords and kings. If Daenerys is to hold the throne, let alone take it, she must prove to the people that living under her guidance is the better option.”

“I would have suspected that you would have more a problem with their sorcerers’ ways, it doesn’t matter. I should see to the defences”

Tyrion soon left the council chamber, night had fallen since the beginning of the council meeting, yet there was still much left to do. The Dead weren’t hindered by simple concepts as rest and the outer fortifications were barely even started on. Still, a dwarf wasn’t as much use lugging stakes and dragonglass shards around, not to mention that, even with the combined experiences of Jon Snow, Brandon Stark, Samwell Tarly, Dolorous Edd, Gendry Waters, the Dragon Queen and every single Wilding in the castle, there was little knowledge exactly as to how the White Walkers and their foot soldiers worked. This problem had to be approached from a new angle, from a completely new set of eyes that was both reasoned, analytical and unfamiliar with the folk tales of old.

Tyrion searched up through the castle, through the towers, the huts, the camps and the keeps. It wasn’t easy finding even one of Ex-Coms people among the tangle of other peoples who had also arrived to join the northern cause: The Knights of the Vale, the Dothraki, The Unsullied, the Wildings as well as the countless civilians that had fled from both from the Wall following their breach and the surrounding keeps of Castle Cerwyn and Karhold. Not the Last Hearth or Deepwood Motte, however; in the former case, it was anyones guess as to what had happened, perhaps young Ned Umber was having difficulty gathering the townspeople at best and at worst, the White Walkers have already arrived there. In the latter case, Lord Robett Glover had instead withdrawn his forces in protest against Jons allegiance to Queen Daenerys. Perhaps a justified act of rebellion in any other time, figuring that Robett had seen Jon as making the exact same mistake that Robb Stark made in marrying a foreigner as opposed to serving Northern interest. Alas however, these times were unique, and it was obvious that House Glover’s traitorous desertion was nothing more than a death sentence, carried out not by the Stark of Targaryen Forces, but by the inevitable and likely unceasing force of the Dead.

At long last, Tyrion found the person he searched for so meticulously on the castle walls, somewhat obscured by one of the guard towers. The man gazing endlessly into the night sky in a somewhat stiff posture, though it was hard to tell with his chalk-white garments Tyrion had seen before now covered by the thick cloaks that Jon, Sansa and some other Northerners had worn, yet his identity was clear from the finely machines spectacles he wore on a constant basis and his darkened skin.

“Doctor Tygan.”

“Ah, Lord Tyrion” he responded, his gaze instantly broken and now turned towards him. “What is it that brings you here?” Tygan said, his accent somewhat dizzying to Tyrion, he may have met peoples from across the world but neither Doctor Tygan nor the vast majority of Ex-com spoke in any kind of drawl familiar to him, all except for their Commander perhaps.

“I wanted to see how the great people of Ex-com are faring. I know that this place would be a lot less comfortable for your likeness so, if there’s anything you need, I’ll do what I can.”

“Thank you, but I don’t think it will be necessary. As a matter of fact, while I cannot speak for everyone, this place doesn’t fail to impress myself and my fellow researchers. Our world has never seen the existence of dragons outside of myths and stories, not to mention that we haven’t seen anything like what we have seen from the weirwood trees. Our researchers have barely rested since our arrival to investigate, catalogue and copy everything we can from the castle grounds. As for our soldiers, most of them have spent most of their lives in squalor; while, of course, this place is a step down from the Avenger, it’s still better than what they have spent most of their lives in. I would recommend that you should speak to one for yourself to get a better perspective”

“Squalor? I would have thought these people would have lived lives of luxury. Your people can communicate instantly over large distances, cure disease and learn more than I possibly could over my entire life”

“I’m afraid that most of these great innovations and technologies weren’t as easily accessible once you stepped outside the many cities owned by the ‘Advent Administration’. Having lived in one of them I could give you a first-hand account of what it was like. These cities were immense, sky-scrapers filled the centres while roads and markets filled every corner. It was a very comfortable affair yet Advent was always watching, they had ways of observing you even with their guards far out of sight yet still, a small price to pay for what amounted to all the food, water and… entertainment you could possibly want”

“It must have been a pretty big cost if it was enough for your group of rebels to overthrow them”

“It was, amidst the other amenities Advent offered, they also had healing capabilities that were advanced beyond comparison, they offered a cure to sickness, to disease and disorder to the human form that us alone couldn’t accomplish ourselves. It is well within reason that, if you were to live in them, they would offer to cure your… dwarfism”, Tygan replied, his gaze brought back to the night sky.

“I don’t see what the problem is with that, anyone would take them up on that offer.” Tyrion asked

“Exactly, millions of people flocked to their cities and, over the twenty years they held control over the world, millions more disappeared under, quote, ‘mysterious circumstances’, when Ex-com, with my assistance discovered that they were but test subjects for horrific experiments that Advents so-called ‘Elders’, we only needed to show the world the truth for them to rebel in immense numbers”

Tyrion shuddered, all this talk about people being experimented on reminded him of the ex-Maester Qyburn, who had since become Hand to Cersei Lannister. Though he would rather spend more of his time in the lower sanctums of the Red Keep messing around with mice as opposed to actually attending to matters of the state, with what Tygan described to him, he could only imagine how things would fare if, in theory, Qyburn himself took the throne. Perhaps it was better if he didn’t think of such things, especially considering such a possibility was impossible. He focused back to what was around him.

“So, what brought you to leave in the first place.”

“For a time, I thought that Advent were legitimately interested in peace. I myself was working as a healer, supplying the people with the medicines they needed. Yet, as Advents actions became more and more cryptic and more and more of my patients disappeared, I couldn’t bear to become a part of their operation. I sought favour with several Resistance groups before eventually ascending as Ex-coms chief scientist, overseeing their research processes. My only regret is that I hadn’t fled sooner.”

“So, you joined this organisation to atone for your perceived crimes?” Tyrion asked.

“They weren’t perceived, but yes, that is true. And with that regard, I believe that I have been successful in that regard. Anyway, I’ve spoken more than enough about us, how are things progressing among yourself and your people?”

“It appears that we will be receiving more visitors. The liege lord of the Riverlands has returned and a few thousand men have rallied back to his side. This, along with the forces my sister will also be sending will give us the largest army that this world has seen in hundreds of years. We’ve received reports that the House Tully will be sending food and provisions and Kings Landing will be sending in shipments of siege weapons, pitch and wildfire. I imagine that would sound rather dull and out of fashion on your side; but we learn to use what we have, right?”

“Forgive me for asking, Lord Tyrion, but could you please clarify what you meant by wildfire? I don’t think myself or any of my team know of such a thing?”

“It’s a rather foul, green-coloured concoction that the alchemists over at Kings Landing produce in rather large numbers. Having worked with it myself, I can tell you that wildfire is as dangerous as it is useful, the substance burns with a ferocity powerful enough to burn anything it touches: wood, bone, steel and flesh alike.”

Tygan gazed at him, his blank expression giving way to a visible concern before coldly returning to normal. “It sounds like quite a potent material if I say so myself, I don’t suppose you have any knowledge on how this substance is produced, do you?”

“No, the methods of producing wildfire is the Guilds best-kept secret and is one of the greatest mysteries in living memory, with the only thing they’re saying about the process is that they use some sort of magic. I would suggest that if your commander wishes to sample the Alchemists finest work, his best bet would be to go to their Guildhall in Kings Landing, on the foot of Viscenya’s Hill. Ask for a ‘Wisdom Hallyne’, he should help show you around provided the years haven’t taken him already.”

“I’ll tell him what you’ve said. Perhaps we could refine this substance into something even more useful in the coming battle. But I have a hunch about what their so-called secret is, and I can only wish that I am wrong, if it isn’t, it could be most dangerous for your people. But, as a great man once said, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And I am sure we will find out what’s going”

“Are you just passing off your own words as ancient wisdom?” Tyrion asked somewhat ironically.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

“No.” Tygan answered sternly.

“Still” he continued. “I would like to ask a favour of you while the ship is still here since I won’t be around when the Dead arrive.”

“What do you need?”

“One of my researchers has become fascinated with the geography of your world ever since the first moment he found a map lying around. Of course, we have managed to copy out your maps of Westeros and Essos alike to the ship to help us navigate.”

“Do you need help completing them?”

“No, Thank you, however. As a matter of fact, the previously mentioned researcher wants me to ask someone with comprehensive knowledge of this world to scour the records for the earliest maps there are available.”

“Well, I could show some records based on legends from the Dawn Age.”

“Yes, that, he told me that he had already heard those stories from a few commoners, tales of giants and children of the forest. However, what he was actually looking for was records from before the Dawn Age. He theorises that there was some cataclysm or disaster that happened thousands of years ago that created the Westeros that you know of.”

“And you believe him?”

“I only believe what I can observe, measure and quantify, Lord Tyrion. But this much is certain, there are forces beyond even our comprehension at work here. I need only look at the sky as evidence that this is the case.”

“And why is that?” Tyrion asked with a curious, yet almost scared posture.

“The stars, the planets, even the moon is exactly in the same position and show the same properties as what we would see in our own world, or at least from what I have been able to map already. We would need to create a complete star map using what we have in the Avenger, but if I am right and the stars are the same, it has some… worrying implications.

Tyrion stood motionless for a minute, trying to piece together everything he had said. Many an hour he had spent behind the many books of Westeros, learning the world and how thinks worked. Yet here, he had asked for a single question and received many, many more in return. Yet, with new knowledge came new opportunities, he put his hands together and snapped back into motion.

“That is most definitely an interesting discussion. Perhaps, when the war is over and the Night King defeated, we could solve this little mystery together.” Tyrion said, with a slightly distracted voice.

“I am looking forward to it” Tygan replied with a smile. He soon left, clutching the glass tablet as he did so. If the people of Ex-com were as shattering to the status quo as Varys had so claimed, perhaps he could change it just the right way.

* * *

** WINTERFELL LIBRARY: COMMANDER WATERSON **

“Commander?”

Michael shot up from the chair like a bullet, forcing the pages of his most recent read shut. His sleep being cut short by the so-called “Maester-in-training” Samwell Tarly.

“What the?! How long have you been here?!” Michael spoke in a raised voice, having to wipe off a drop of spit that ran down the side of his mouth with his thickened, white coat.

Michael slumbered out towards the window, it had now since been daylight and had practically abandoned his own organisation to its own vices, while he knew that he didn’t need to babysit every single person in XCOM to bend to his own wishes, it didn’t give him any relief either way.

“Aww crap, did I seriously just sleep through the entire night in the library?”

“It’s nothing to feel embarrassed about. I cannot even tell you how many times I fell asleep in the library myself. Gods, I still fall asleep with my face in a book; I have been trying to scour the citadels records for any secret we can get against the army of the Dead”

Waterson didn’t reply, he felt so tired still it was almost as though he never got any sleep whatsoever; his nails almost digging into his almost sickly face as he was hunched over the table.

“Yeah, yeah, carry on” He said, getting up from the chair, his legs almost jelly-like and cold as a pair of oversize icicles. He pulled out his communicator, fiddling around with the wires to set up the earpiece.

“If I may, I would like to ask a question, it’s not a big one, but when I heard Daenerys talk about it I got curious about it, that’s all.” Sam said, putting his own scrolls and books on the table.

“Sure…” Waterson replied, slowly getting back to his senses. “What’s on your mind?”

“Apparently your house, sorry, organisation has the words ‘Vigilo Confido’ written on your sigil. None of the people here can recognise the language, which is quite the achievement considering we have folks here speaking the Common Tongue, Dothraki, Mereenese, High Valyrian, Low Valyrian and a slew of other languages. So… could you help fill us in?” Sam asked, leaning against the table.

“Sure.” The Commander of XCOM had now stood up to attention. “I believe it it translates to ‘I stand vigilant’ but it doesn’t translate properly to the common tongue and what you get depends on who you ask. But I like this translation, it’s on point and summarises what everyone else would say.” He answered.

“’I stand vigilant’, I guess that’s a pretty apt description considering how you seem like your own worlds Nights Watch.” Sam said.

“I guess, a shame then that there aren’t any proper native speakers of the language anymore. I don’t think anyone ever spoke Latin in casual conversation for the best part of a thousand years. It holds the same kind of value in our world that Valyrian does in yours, except of course that the Romans, the people who made and spread Latin, never had anything like dragons or magic, they were just… people. Granted, they conquered as much of the world as they knew but they were still people, they didn’t need dragons or fire magic, just hardened legions and superior battle tactics.”

Their conversation was interrupted with the entry of Yohn “Bronze” Royce, his identity clear with this sky-blue armour juxtaposed with his bulging, yet aged visage. He only stood next to the doorway, barely paying attention to Samwell as he was now firmly sat with his hands on his now open books.

“Commander Waterson?” Royce spoke

“Ah, Lord Royce, how can I be of assistance?” Michael replied, his tiredness still lingering slightly.

“Lady Sansa requests that you see her immediately, I have been ordered to escort you to her.” He said in a slightly stern tone.

“Pfffffffff….. okay, sure, why not?” Waterson replied unenthusiastically, pushing himself off the bookshelf. “I’ll humour you, it’s been nice speaking with you, Sam. Best of luck in your studies.”

The two soon left, the long walk to Lady Starks chambers being eerily quiet. Michael could almost feel the tension, a feeling he did absolutely did not need at this very time. He attempted to break the silence between him and Lord Royce.

“So…. I heard that you were one of Jon Arryn’s closest advisors for many decades. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the man, served as Lord of the Vale and Warden of the East, helped overthrow the ‘Mad King’ as everyone likes to tell.”

Yohn Royce didn’t respond or even look at him, he only looked forward to where he was going. In truth it was his first time in Winterfell in years, Royce hadn’t left the Vale much in his many years. Even in war since the Neck served as the greatest natural fortification for the North; whenever war came to Westeros, nine times out of ten, the fighting was always in the Riverlands, where the centre of pretty much everything happened.

Waterson looked again at the Valeman, a little confused yet still perseverant.

“Sorry, touchy subject, I’ve only just begun to read up on current affairs, I don’t think there are yet a lot of written records on the War of the Five Kings as some people like to call it. Still, a tragedy, especially considering everything that’s going on now”, Michael continued.

“What goes on in the Seven Kingdoms is of no concern to you.” Yohn spoke with almost a shout. “You and your people are outsiders, nothing more. I granted an audience with Daenerys Targaryen and her army of foreigners out of respect for Lady Stark but I have no such reservations with you and the rest of your ilk. Were it up to myself, I would ask that you keep to yourself and leave once the moment the Night King is defeated.”

Waterson said nothing, clearly, he was no good company to be with, he could only look outwards towards the courtyard outside as the other Westerosi forces were training with sword and shield. He could have sworn that he caught a glimpse of one of his own training among them, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise as he knew more than a handful of XCOM soldiers that would be as crazy to prefer stabbing aliens up close instead of shooting them from a reasonable distance.

One long, annoyingly silent walk to the higher levels of the Great Keep later, he finally found himself before the Lady of Winterfell. Waterson was shaking at what she had to say, clutching his pendant with a death grip; all he knew about her for sure was during that first meeting he had with what seemed to be all the Lords and Ladies of Westeros, he hadn’t had the chance to delve into her origins, even during his arduously long meetings with her rather tomboyish sister Arya.

“Lady Stark, May I present Michael Waterson, Commander of XCOM” Royce announced, standing to attention before her, her flowing auburn hair contrasting the thick, ravenlike black clothing that almost entirely hid the fact that she was wearing plate armour underneath her cloak.

“Thank you, Lord Royce, would you mind the door please, I would like to speak to this man alone.” he saw himself out of the room afterwards yet evidently just to stand guard in case anything fishy would happen both inside the room and out. Sansa herself stood opposite the room to Waterson, standing close to the wooden table with only a plate of lemon cakes and a pitcher of water standing on the centre.

“Commander Waterson, I received word from Lady Brienne that one of your people refused her access to the ship.” Sansa began.

“This is correct.”

“And she also told me that you have ordered your people to refuse any of our people to be within a foot of your ship”

“This is also correct”. Waterson responded, his twitching starting to calm down.

Sansa began to sit, inching close to the table. She gestured to the him, insisting that he also sat. He obliged, he knew that this was her turf and was willing to play along.

“Now, Lady Brienne told me last of all that you insist that what is in this ship would drive any one of us to superstition and madness. So, please, enlighten me, what horrors are on your ship that could possibly drive you to secrecy?”

The Commander began to sit in response. “Ma’am, what you need to understand here is that this is an extremely delicate situation, unlike anything ever witnessed before here or, most, likely, after. A completely different people, with their own cultures, customs, history and technology the likes of which this place has never seen, my people? It’s dangerous. Show the wrong thing to the wrong person and things will go wrong. Fights will break out, people will get killed.”

“Our people will understand, the place is already crawling with peoples of different cultures: Northmen, Valemen, Wildlings, Unsullied and Dothraki. Jon has united all alike, we would have no reason to treat your people differently.”

“Be that as it may, we have a saying where we come from, discretion is the better part of valour. I’ve already seen the various smallfolk and Dothraki horselords alike try to hassle us and we have barely been here a few days.” Waterson said, his hands clenched yet still fidgety. “Please understand that we have no ill intentions for your world and we have no reason to see you or any of your people harmed.”

Sansa did not change stance and only continued: “And how am I supposed to take you at your word? Need I remind you that Winterfell is no place for schemers and backstabbers. If you wish to continue our hospitality, I would recommend that you tell us about anything that may give suspicion upfront so that we can deal with the situation accordingly. Trust me, you don’t want what happened to the last man with grand aspirations that tried to deceive us.”

“You don’t need to tell me; your sister couldn’t stop talking about how she cut his throat like a filleted fish. Look, myself, and by extension XCOM don’t deceive. We may hide, we may strike from the shadows. But we aren’t whatever Littlefinger was, we don’t break bread with our enemies or stab them in the back. If we ever turn on our allies, we will at least give them advance notice before obliterating them from existence.”

Sansa began to stand back up, swiping one of the lemon cakes from the plate as she did so. “Tell me, what do you know about Littlefinger?”

“Only what Arya told me. That he was a schemer that almost brought your house to ruin and did some messed up stuff to try and get there.”

Sansa took a bite of the cake, continuing the speech as she ate.

“Petyr Baelish started up as a paltry commoner from the Vale, yet his skills with statecraft and his so-called ‘skills with coin’ quickly brought him up to become Master of Coin to Robert Baratheon, yet no-one asked where exactly he got it from.”

Waterson shook a little, he sounded like every one of those self-styled “started from the bottom” businessmen who would be all too happy to cast down people like him, a fact that was slightly assuaged by the fact that most of them wound up on the crossfire the moment the aliens arrived.

Sansa continued: “He approached my father first to investigate the sudden death of Jon Arryn. It was a farce of course, sending him only to find evidence he had planted himself to hide the fact that he himself was responsible to bring the Vale under his heel under the strings of Jons rather pathetic son, Robin.”

“Don’t tell me, he did this because he wanted to get rid of your father for some reason.” Waterson suggested.

“Please do not interrupt me.” Sansa immediately spoke. “The reason he sent Eddard under his goose chase was to figure out that Roberts so-called heir and, from my own experience, monster Joffrey was a bastard born of incest between his then-wife Cersei Lannister and her twin brother Jaime.”

“That’s… genuinely disgusting.” Waterson said, struggling to maintain his calm demeanour.

“Of course, my father tried to force both Cersei and Joffrey out of the capital before he would share this information with Robert like the honourable fool he was. My father was a good man, but what happened next only happened because he let his honour get in the way of reason.”

“Go on…”

Sansa finished off her cake and quickly gulped, she knew that this part was going to be difficult for her.

“Not long after, Robert died in what everyone called a hunting accident. When Eddard marched to the Red Keep to force Joffrey and Cersei off the throne to appoint Roberts brother, Stannis to the throne, Littlefinger turned on my father and had him imprisoned. When he was brought to the Great Sept of Baelor to confess falsely that he wanted the throne Joffrey had him executed, even in spite of both mine and Cersei’s pleas to spare him and have him be sent to the Night’s Watch. He took my fathers head and forced me to stare at it on the Traitor’s Walk for his amusement. He had me brought before the throne room and tried to have Ser Meryn strip me down before the smallfolk. Not because my brother Robb called his banners against him, but because he wanted to.”

“That’s horrible!”

“It didn’t stop there. For the next three years Joffrey sought to torment me as he saw fit, stopping only when he either got bored of me, in which he chose either to torment his other subjects or to kill any animals or smallfolk that did so little as get in his way.” Sansa continued, her voice slightly breaking.

“I presume he didn’t get to enjoy the throne long if, first, he is as cruel as you had described and second, if it only happened for three years.” Waterson queried.

“Indeed, on his wedding day nonetheless, he found himself poisoned. It was a shame that I found myself spirited off for what was claimed to be for my own safety. The things I would do if only I could see exactly how that monster died.”

“So… you were sent back to Winterfell and you have been living here comfortably until now?”

“Of course not, it was none other than Littlefinger who was responsible for my passage!”

“Oh…”

“He had spirited off to Ramsay Bolton, a man who would instead preferred torturing people to animals whose house had since taken this castle after murdering my brother Robb. Tell me, Commander Waterson, would you like to know our wedding day? Would you like to show you exactly what he did to me on that day?”

“Errrr, excuse me?” Waterson confusingly asked, was she now trying to seduce him or something?

“He raped and violated me like I was a piece of meat; I had to escape with one of his other so-called playthings just to escape. I had to do some manipulating of my own, as well as to convince Jon to leave the Watch to kill Ramsay and assume House Starks rightful place as Kings in the North”

“And what of Littlefinger?”  
“He made one last attempt to try and seize power in the North. Ever since my fathers death I never heard so much as a whisper of any of my siblings. When both Bran and Arya had returned barely a few weeks since the prior battle, I was ecstatic. Yet Littlefinger, the schemer he was, sought to turn me against them, trying to trick me into thinking they blamed me for Eddards death, going so far as to sneak a falsified letter into my chambers. I do admit, he did convince me for some time, it was all the better perhaps that Bran is, well… different. He can see everything that is and was, he told me everything I have now told you about his treason. We had him brought before the Great Hall, laid all his crimes before the North and the Vale, perhaps if he was as intelligent as he so claimed to be, he wouldn’t have bawled like a child before Arya gave him his long overdue execution.”

“Right…” Waterson had little to say. She had made her inclinations towards those who kept secrets as clear as the skies above the castle they stood on; His twitching almost impossible to conceal.

“So now you can understand why House Stark does not tolerate schemers of any kind. Now, I will only say this once. Tell me what could possibly be in your ship to merit your secrecy or I’ll have Lord Royce execute you right here and now.”

Waterson only grimaced as a response, looking down to avoid eye contact. His twitching barely controllable as he caressed his sidearm holster. His pistol was still on him yet he didn’t know if he could put up a fight. Yet, this wasn’t the time to make a stand, he needed their support and they needed theirs. His hands instead reached towards his tablet.

“Okay, I’ll try and phrase this as best as possible given your experiences.” He pulled out his tablet and laid it flat to the ground. “You want to know what’s so dangerous? I’ll show you.” He pressed on the screen, first revealing the XCOM emblem.

“XCOM wasn’t that much different to your own Night’s Watch. We both began as a shield to protect the realms of Men, the only difference is while the Watch began in at least a somewhat serious manner and later devolved to a ‘place you keep your prisoners in’, XCOM was a joke from the very start. We never had a big war like the Long Night of old to call kings or heroes or whatever to imprison the great evil in some cold waste in the middle of nowhere. All we had was a single crashed alien ship barely the size of a horse-drawn cart”

He made a few swipes on the tablets screen to raise a holographic projection of the aforementioned ship; it wasn’t much of an image given the antiquated camera technology of the 1940’s but clearly displayed what it was: a blackened, disc-shaped smudge overlaid over kilometres of desert bellowing smoke from its form.

“Even with our most dire warnings that whoever sent that ship would arrive in force, all that the nations of the world would give us is a single fortress in the middle of nowhere and the bare minimum in provisions and supplies needed to sustain us. Hell, I only became their Commander because my father wanted to spite me. He resented the fact that I spent more time studying battles than fighting them so he politically leveraged myself here so that I could never progress. I swear, even I don’t even know how on earth he managed to pull that one off.”

“What has this got to do with anything?” Sansa asked, unimpressed, “What’s your point?”

“Please, be patient, I had to sit and listen to your life story; it’s only fair that you listen to mine.” Waterson replied. “Now, of course, it was barely seventy years since its founding that the beings that sent that first ship arrived in force. They went by two names most of all, some call them the Elders, but I think that’s an insult to reality, for my purposes, they’re called the Ethereals, so named not only because you never saw them in person, but because they maintained their control of their armies by magic, not by actual rule.”

He switched the image to a picture of one such Ethereal, its raisin-like skin was juxtaposed with its slender, humanoid yet four-armed body. Sansa almost recoiled with horror at its disgusting body.

“Seven Hells! What is that?!”

Waterson only merited a chuckle. “Exactly, I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

He sighed, switching the hologram again to footage of one of the many battles. It showed an alien battleship, probably twice as large as the Avenger blasting through the cityscape of Tokyo City, ripping buildings, aircraft, people and vehicles apart under scores of plasma fire both from the ships and the aliens themselves.

“We never stood a chance. Even without their magic the Ethereals knowledge of the universe was leagues above our own. We could barely even raise our armies in time before their ships laid our cities and our lands to waste, these cities that, at their largest, could hold up as many as twenty times more people than those in Kings Landing.”

He switched the hologram again to an assortment of XCOM soldiers fighting multitudes of alien creatures of all kinds ranging from the tiny-bug-eyed Sectoids to the hulking Mutons to the mangled, fleshy yet metallic Floaters and insectile Cryssalids before finishing with the aliens final, yet inevitable assault on the XCOM base itself.

“XCOM put up a hell of a fight, I even managed to score a few victories against the Ethereals with help of a few tricks of our own. But it was not enough, their forces were too strong, and we couldn’t keep up with their technology fast enough. By the time they came for us at our heart, our soldiers were either dead or horrifically wounded from their advanced weapons. Even today I don’t know how many brave souls died trying to protect the base. All I do know is that they came straight for me, I was captured and forced straight onto one of their ships.”

He closed the hologram projector and unclipped the chip case from his pendant, almost softly throwing it on the table in front of him. She picked up the chip before sitting back down herself.

“They kept me as a prisoner in my own mind using that very chip as a leash. Tell me, would you like to know how they used that thing to enslave me?!”

Sansa shrugged confused, holding the chip in her hand. “I… don’t know”

“They force your mouth open, slice open the back of your throat and bury that chip halfway through your skull; all while you are wide awake yet completely paralysed, you cannot move, you cannot speak; all you could do is watch as these creatures meddled and toiled at your very being. You cannot even begin to imagine what that is like for yourself and I don’t expect you to understand. Once that was done, I was clad in a rather special suit of armour that kept my body alive yet my mind… I only saw what the Ethereals wanted me to see, I was made to fight their battles, command their forces with my mind shacked to their will. All while the Ethereals built the so-called ADVENT Administration, a government encompassing the entire world that kept the people comfortable and cosy just like a farmer keeps their cattle comfortable….”

He gestured to Sansa for the chip back, she obliged, with him taking back the chip and clipping it back on his pendant. He brought the projector back, showing arguably the worst memory of all in his experience overthrowing ADVENT. Waterson gulped as his own voice began to break as he showed a projection of one of their many Black sites, the corridors interiors surrounded by immeasurable numbers of occupied stasis pods stacked up like books in a library, the blacksites floors covered in a layer of the same green liquid that filled those same pods.

“….And, much like a farmer and his cattle, ADVENT slaughtered us in the millions, harvesting our very flesh to further fuel their machinations, part and parcel of which was they called ‘Avatars’, new bodies for their frail forms to occupy without any loss of their magical capabilities, created from the essences of our greatest.”

Sansa could only gaze in shock, this was beyond anything she had ever seen or what anyone could ever see. The scores of pods lowering into the ground ending the lives, stories and experiences of each occupant lowered into the chambers.

Waterson then switched from his experiences in the Blacksite to his experiences in the ADVENT Forge.

“Nothing went to waste either, anything they couldn’t use to make Avatars went straight towards growing new foot soldiers for the latest generation of peacekeepers. ADVENT doesn’t breed their soldiers like a prized dog, too much variation, too random. No, ADVENT soldiers were grown, a twisted mutation of man that knew only loyalty to the Ethereals and never knew even a second of freedom, with each possessing their own control chip much like mine to keep them in line.”

He switched to a recording of the Reaper “Outrider” in her recon operation to locate him, the green-tinted camera feed showing him encased in the red, baggy stasis suit he was imprisoned in.

“It took the concerted efforts of multiple resistance organisations, including the XCOM you are now familiar with to break me out. Dr. Tygan himself had to work quickly to get the chip out of me before the very vices that kept me in place tried to end my life. Believe me when I say that the only thing that was worse than the procedure to get the chip in was the one to get it out. Not only were the damn things never meant to be removed I found myself equally immobile and fading in and out of consciousness. I felt this close to falling into the timeless void that is death itself.”

He sighed, there was one last revelation relating to his escape that still plagued his very being even as he stood.

“Tell me, Lady Stark, how long do you think I was kept under the Ethereals yoke for? How long was ADVENT built up until I was able to fight back?”

“I-I don’t know” she stammered, “What has that got to do wit-“

“Twenty years.”

“What?”

“For twenty years I was kept in a dreamless sleep, my body frozen in time. By the time I was out of that suit of armour, nothing was ever the same. My homes and cities reduced to rubble, most of my comrades killed. Perhaps the only familiar face I saw was that of John Bradford, yet even then he was but a shell of the man he was, forced into squalor as he tried to continue the war while he still breathed. We did find a few familiar faces as we fought ADVENT, tried to open the peoples eyes to what you saw; turned out one or two of our own made their own resistance movements turning the Ethereals magic against them, another had turned out also shackled to the Ethereals as I was but instead as a source of magical energy which was… bad, that was a bad thing.

“And your family? What happened to House Waterson?”

“Okay, first, don’t ever refer to my family as ‘House Waterson’ ever again, we were never lords of anything. Second, they died… all of them, turned out, my father had died in the initial invasion fruitlessly trying to liberate his home in the city of London. Then the rest of my family died in those green vessels you saw. For whatever the Ethereals saw in me that was worth capturing they saw it in my family too, choosing to harvest it so that it would not go to waste.”

Waterson could only cry, he may have been scolded by his father for not continuing his legacy, but he still loved the rest of them.

“I lost my mother and two sisters under ADVENT by my very own sword, and I didn’t even know I even held the hilt.”

“Gods, I’m so sorry”

“’Sorry’ didn’t bring them back, if I wasn’t pissed off the moment I left ADVENT’s clutches, I definitely was the second I discovered they wiped my bloodline from existence. Of every drop of my family’s blood they spilled I would repay to those four-armed monsters tenfold…. And I did.”

Waterson switched to one final projection, displaying the immensity of the Ethereals inner sanctum that was reduced to rubble in Operation Leviathan.

“Ten months and millions of lives later, we turned the Ethereals own magic against them. First, we hijacked the very apparatus they used to control their soldiers, which had already degraded since I was forcibly pulled from it, instead using it to reveal to every man, woman and child in one of ADVENTs cattle ranches they called ‘cities’ what we had seen, the very things I had just shown you. They rebelled on a scale you couldn’t possibly imagine, secondly, using an Avatar body we had recovered and I had wound up possessing myself using the very suit of armour made to shackle me, I led a small army to destroy the Ethereals once and for all so their control of their armies would stay down. We won, the world was free from ADVENT’s clutches and mankind was free once more to govern their own fate.”

“What of the Avatar you possessed?”

“It died, not only with the Ethereals, but with the very fortress it stood on. To this day, there is not a single Avatar that walks on my world, and for the better too if I say so myself”

Waterson began to walk to the window, tightly clutching onto his pendant.

“And that… Sansa, is the point. How do you feel now that I have told you everything? Are you sad? Are you bewildered? That ship doesn’t just hold the various weapons we used to fight the Ethereals but some of the same tools they used for their own machinations. Some of our own soldiers show magical abilities that both the Ethereals and some of their foot soldiers use. Tell me, were one of your own people to sneak aboard the ship and discover the various things without knowing the story behind them, would it be unreasonable to assume that they would think we were lying and instead seeking to conquer this world?”

Sansa didn’t respond.

“Do you think that these people, who haven’t even seen a living dragon in their time, react as well to a weapon that can literally take over your mind?!”

No response.

“Would it not be safe to assume that they would wind up turning on us based on nothing more than a misconception, a scenario that you yourself both suffered for and are trying to avoid? And you decided to threaten to kill me and my people if I don’t do what you want?!”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

Waterson jutted right towards her, briefly angered yet returning to the stoicism he was somewhat known for.

“And still you chose to threaten me. Tell me, what kind of wheels turned in your head that decided that you should provoke a man who could have your entire castle turned to a pile of rubble with the snap of his fingers? And here I was, completely buying what your sister had said about being the ‘Smartest person in the North’. You’re not smart, you’re just a paranoid girl who wants to scare everyone she thinks a threat in the hopes that nobody will ever hurt you again.”

“Now listen here!” Sansa interjected, standing up to attention in anger.

“Calm down, I didn’t come here to grill on peoples lifestyles; hell, I didn’t come here for anything, you summoned me here. I don’t mean to antagonise you, I know you have been through enough as it is both for yourself and your people and the people of the North look up to you on that. We have both suffered at the hands of tyrants, Lady Stark, but it is what we do after that truly defines who we are. Because if we use our own suffering to justify our cruelty, then what makes us so different to them?” She sat back down, still mildly frustrated.

He began to wander around the room, his fingers pressed to his forehead as he tried to formulate a new strategy. Even if he may have convinced Sansa of his reasoning, he couldn’t be certain that other, less sympathetic individuals would. Were the Queen to hear about his policies it could lay both sides worse off.

“So, what do we do now?”

Waterson returned to the table and sat with her, his pendant flat to the table.

“Send word to Daenerys, I’d like to send a message on my behalf.”

“What would you like me to tell her”

“Tell her that she can send a representative to our ship. We will treat them as our own, we’ll make sure no harm comes to them and they can stay in communication with the Queen at any time, even if they are far away in Essos”

“That’s a rather specific example, why would you be going to Essos?”

“We have reason to believe that the magic of the Ethereals is not too dissimilar to the fire magic that Valyria practiced before the fabled Doom. We’re heading there to see if Valyria has the knowledge we need to find a way home. But make no mistake, when the Dead come, and they will. I promise to be there myself to make sure that this world will see the dawn once again. We are XCOM, and our job is to protect.”

“Why not tell her yourself? It shouldn’t be too difficult.”

“I have important work to do, Lady Stark, I already have no doubt the others are concerned as to my whereabouts.”

Waterson stood back up, he was a little shaky getting up but it wasn’t too much of a problem.

“I do have one more question if it’s not too much, Commander Waterson.” Sansa queried, standing up with him

“What is it?”

“Why did you choose to wear that chip around your neck if it brought you so much pain?” she asked.

“Good Question. It is forever a reminder of how we got where we were and what happens to our enemies. It is a promise and a warning, an ally looks at this and remembers that no matter how hopeless it seems, our enemies will end up defeated with the very tools of their initial success. An enemy looks at this and remembers what happens when they fight us for the same reason. Now, at this juncture, I have to go now. I wish you the best, Lady Stark, enjoy the rest of your day.”

“Likewise, Commander Waterson, best of luck with your travels. Feel free to take a lemon cake on the way out.”

“Thanks” Waterson said, quickly swiping a sugary morsel before quickly exiting the room, moving with a power-walk down the innumerable stairs of the Great Keep while taking a rather large bite out of it. He put a finger to his ear as he brought his communicator on.

“Stand down, Sgt. Muller. I’m in the clear” he said. He had kept the sniper around as insurance as he was with Lord Royce in case things went too sour, using a four-button code on his watch as a method of discreet communication. A feature that proved useful during his first-contact operation with the Templars in the first few months since he escaped ADVENT.

He had headed out of the courtyard and headed for the Godswood. He was hoping to get an update both from the researchers on their findings and perhaps to speak with Brandon Stark. Considering how there were several gaps in the history of Westeros, especially of those before the Dawn age which one of his scientists couldn’t stop droning about, he figured that perhaps he could help with that regard.

By the time he was there the place gleaned with an eerie silence. Even in Winterfells darkest hour nobody would dare to disturb the peace that was so reminiscent of what basically amounted to a place of worship to their so-called “Old Gods”. When he had reached the fabled weirwood tree he couldn’t find any of his scientists anywhere, perhaps they had been cross-referencing the library records as he did. It didn’t matter, the situation wasn’t too urgent for him and he could check at any time. Still, he could still see the Stark boy, it appeared that time he spent not during important meetings at daytime was time he spent in the Godswood.

Waterson rested upon the now-frozen pond that resided in the front of the weirwood tree, he had already had a look around the place perhaps three or four times already and still he found the weirwood a mystifying sight. It was larger than all the other trees that flanked it and was covered in chalky white bark with rusted red leaves that, according to the locals, remained completely constant throughout the thousands of years such a tree could live for, and the face…. He could only wish that the face on each weirwood tree that covered Westeros was carved on by the so-called “Children of the Forest”, because the alternative was a much more worrying prospect.

“Michael Waterson…” Bran said, his wheelchair within arm’s reach of the tree.

“Ah, Hello Brandon, sorry to bother you. How are things right now?” Waterson replied.

“I remember the time I was Brandon Stark. In the months since I see so much more.”

“Yeah, the Three-Eyed Raven and all that. Jon told me that about your visions, they told me you managed to expose Littlefinger for his crimes. Still, I can’t imagine how it feels for you.”

“I can see so much now. Every person, every soul that walks this land and every soul that was. And, until recently, I could even see what was to come.”

“What happened?”

“Your people came. By coming to our lands XCOM has broken the balances that keep this world in line. I fear that all may be lost in the coming weeks.”

“Please, don’t worry. Once the Night King is dealt with and we have departed I am sure that all will return to what it was. Surely there’s no need for unnecessary scaremongering, right?”

“What is to say you can return to your own lands

“Look….” Waterson reassured as he leant upon the weirwood tree, once again pressing one hand to his forehead and the other to the trees branch. “Our researchers are some of the best we can get and if something can pull us here, I’m sure we can-“

Waterson collapsed to the ground, his consciousness faltering the moment he tried to clutch the branch. His body fell sideways on to the snow, Bran kept his gaze, unfettered by the now-incapacitated leader of XCOM.

.

.

Michaels eyes opened to a wall of darkened grey, an unceasing corridor lit only by the occasional window. Leagues of soldiers ran up and down the corridors, some carrying full-length broadswords, others carrying bows and others with their hands full of arrow quivers, torches or barrels.

“Hello?”

One of the soldiers, a man clad in armour with his face covered by his helmet briefly looked at him confused. The Commander attempted to further get his attention by standing in his path yet he moved straight on unfettered, his body passing straight through Watersons. Was he dead? Dreaming? Either possibility shook him to the core.

He ran along the corridor, running straight through the army’s worth of people running along, a few more people acting distracted by what seemed to be his presence. The place was a maze, a labyrinth of corridors, spiral staircases and battlements. He ran up and down this mysterious castle for the best part of an hour before finally finding himself at least fifty metres in the air, holed up in one of the castles towers. At long last he found what looked like one of the castles nobles, at least from what he could determine. He was young, yet pudgy, his armour bearing what he could determine as a house sigil, the moment that Waterson realised the coat of arms, he panicked.

It was the sigil of House Hoare, the four-part shield with a black raven on blue at the left side, a golden longship on black on top, a tree on white on the right side and a cluster of red grapes on gold on the bottom. Now he knew what was going on. He was now witness to the past, and this noble along with everyone else in the castle was about to die.

“Get those bolts to Father, if Harren said he wanted to kill that silver-haired sister-fucker himself you’d better make sure he does or he’ll have you executed as a deserter, now get out of my sight!” the noble said, storming off outside.

Waterson ran downstairs quickly, his panic distracting him from the fact he hadn’t drawn a single breath, felt his heartbeat or feel any exhaustion throughout his visit. His distracted running caused him to slip, tumbling down what he could only assume was the equivalent of three or four floors down, phasing through at least twenty more people down the whole way. Yet, even so, he remained uninjured, despite several harder hits feeling like they would break a bone or two. He barely noticed however amid the chaos and impending horror, instead frantically crawling outside, constantly twitching and looking around himself as he did so.

The moment he left into the courtyard, a jungle of stone and towering walls and keeps was rocked to the foundations by an almost deafening and bellowing roar, heralded with a winged shadow drowning out what little sunlight fell on the castle grounds. Waterson quickly looked to the sky to gaze at the shadow. He knew this was a dragons and it was descending upon the castle, and fast. The beast was immense, at least three times the size of Daenerys’ dragons whilst being as inky blank as the very shadow it cast, arguably darker even and, if he was right on his assumptions, the first of its kind ever to land on Westeros.

His suspicions confirmed, all he could now was only gaze at the colossal beast. The hails of scorpion fire completely missing it as the dragon barrelled towards the castle, the towers almost reaching out to it for mercy as the dragon bathed the place in scorching flame: timbers, livestock, men alike fell, even the stone walls themselves began to melt under the beasts all-consuming fire. Waterson could only close his eyes before the flames inevitably consumed him.

Then he woke up.

He jolted back to life, flinging himself almost to the frozen pond. He was back in Winterfell at the Godswood, almost as if he never left.

“Commander, you alright?” Bradford asked.

“Central… How long was I out for?” Waterson replied.

“Two hours, thirteen minutes and forty-five seconds” Bran responded, still perched on his wheelchair, completely.

“And… you were just watching me the whole time?!” Waterson spat. “Have you nothing better to do with your time?!”

“It is most curious that you were able to lay witness to the last folly of Harren the Black, however. It is only those with the Gift that can see into the past…”

“Answer… the question.” Waterson insisted.

“Commander, please.” Central insisted “Calm down, it’s not worth it.”

“You’re right.” He went back to his feet, regaining his composure. “What’s the progress on the ship?”

“Shen’s got the engines in working order, we should be able to leave by tomorrow as soon as we finish the tests on the landing gear.”

“Splendid, how’s progress copying the records from the libraries? We need to make sure that every single detail is not missing. Any of these tomes could hold-centuries-long information that could help us out of here.”

“Not great, the scanners aren’t able to copy each record with detail as most of them are handwritten by quill and ink instead of printed so they are highly inconsistent in tone. Professor Mills has had to go over thousands of pages of data himself, correcting every incorrectly placed ‘I’ or ‘a’”

“And… the other scientists aren’t helping him?!”

“Apparently not.”

Waterson began to head back out. There was no time for distraction and, as far as he was concerned, the scientists had every time to gawk at the scenery when the army of zombies would no longer be an issue. It was just the small and rather trivial matter of trying to bring all of his various subordinates in line.

“I swear to Christ, I have to do everything myself!” he grumbled, walking first with a limp as his left leg fell asleep but slowly came back round.

“Be careful, Michael Waterson, what you had seen has already alerted your presence to the Night King. The fate that befalls us is poised to bring your people to ruin as well. Your decisions in the coming days could mean the end for all others, it will follow you, as it followed us.” Bran said, his gaze unceasing as Waterson was leaving.

Watersons expression changed dramatically from frustration to near-shock. The cripple’s words as ominous as his own presence; There were greater forces at play here; and whatever they were, whatever their intentions, XCOM had found themselves as their latest pawn. He could only hope that their role would leave with them once the deed was done.

* * *

** THE WOLFSWOOD: ARYA STARK **

“THUNK”

The joy of getting the perfect hit on your target lost its sensation after the first hundred times. Alas, there was little that could be done at daylight without inevitably running into someone: Northerners, Wildlings, Valemen, Dothraki, Unsullied and now the confusing XCOM all lived under one roof, and it was getting far too crowded for Arya’s liking. At least in the nearby Wolfswood could she get some quiet from all the near-constant noise those mouth-breathers made constantly, even if the place looked deader than anyone in House Bolton. The rain followed by the immediate cold had glazed every single tree in solid ice and adorned every single branch with frozen daggers, ready to fall on a moments notice.

She moved straight to the tree, pulling out the three arrows from the straw figure she had affixed to it, going so far as to give it features, ranging from an ill-fitting red dress she took from her years in Braavos to a head of wolf-pelt hair. She didn’t like how it looked however, even after she skewered it full of arrows, Lannisters are supposed to have gold-coloured hair, not whatever this was. It didn’t matter, the list of people she wanted dead was almost entirely complete: be it either by her own hand, such as that of the perverted Ser Meryn Trant or of the betrayer Walder Frey, or by the actions of others, such as that of the late king Joffrey Baratheon, a shame she couldn’t at least watch him choke to death on his own wedding.

She spent a modest time repeating the cycle of loosing arrows at the effigy and retrieving them when she heard a faint noise at the distance. It was hard to ascertain exactly where it was coming from as she properly buried herself in the Wolfswood, about a full mile in to get even a chance of peace and quiet. No longer apparently, she could distinctly hear voices and they were closing in on her; thinking fast, she pulled the effigy from the tree and climbed one of the larger trees. She may have been somewhat of a fast mover and an acrobat but even Arya would concede that she couldn’t hold a candle to Brans climbing before everything happened: His accident, his journey north and his time as the Three-Eyed Raven.

“Tell you what, whoever kills the most zombies gits the bottle of vintage. Until thin, it stays on the ship.” Said a male voice, his accent almost familiar yet still sounding wrong; like he was having a fit every time he uttered certain words.

“Ha! You’re on, comrade. You just wait until this ‘Night King’ faces this bear!” Another voice spoke, his accent in a foreign and near-incomprehensible drawl that sounded like absolutely nothing she heard before, was he drunk?

“Keep talking, Chepurov, maybe if you actually **fired** your big fuck-off cannon for just once in your life instead of smashing them in the face with it, you’d be chugging that wine by the barrel while not pissing off every single mechanic in the entire ship!” A womans voice retorted, her accent harder to discern from the rasp in her voice.

“There no fun in that. I like to watch faces of my enemies before I rip them to pieces!”

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ Vasily, If you don’t shut up this instant I’ll kill you myself if the zombies don’t!” another voice shouted, this time being the voice of another woman, clearly irritated and speaking in an accent more reminiscent of how their “Chief Engineer” spoke

Just her luck, of all the people in the middle of nowhere to interrupt her moment to herself it just so happened to be XCOM, assuredly the most foreign of them all. Even the continuous pressuring of their commander wasn’t enough to relieve her of their intentions and practices, especially considering how most their people seemed all but tethered to their magic: Their scholars relying upon it to seek knowledge and their soldiers fighting with their weapons instead of their wits. These people were the ultimate exemplar of the term “outsider” to her, and the last time House Stark took in outsiders the North fell to war and half her house was murdered in cold blood. She could only hope that these outsiders were different

The one people she couldn’t simply learn about in Winterfells libraries. Sure, she knew about the tales of how the Unsullied saved Qohor from the likes of Khal Tamo and the stories of how Aegon brought Westeros to his knees with dragonfire but XCOM? Not even within the deepest depths of the Citadels archives nor any record within the House of Black and White could even begin to imagine, let along record any history of a people that descended from a hole in the sky on an iron ship as large as a small keep. No, the only way to learn about who they were was by speaking to them, a task she hated following her exchange with their Commander.

She counted five of them, maybe six; each of them were clad in almost glimmering and almost seamless armour in varying colours. The familiar-sounding man was clad in purple-coloured armour that rippled like water yet was almost covered by the fur coat he was still wearing, barely concealing a set of daggers along across his chest. Even so, he wasn’t carrying a weapon unlike the rest of them yet remained as respected among their ranks as everyone else. Yet most curious of all was his hair; he sure tried to conceal it behind his helm yet even from the treetops Arya could see that this man had the silver hair she only saw from Daenerys or others with Valyrian blood.

“So, how are the gauntlets?” Another man said, his weapon slung on his torso almost invisible in front of his blue, streaky-patterned armour.

“They’re amazing” The purple man said, “They’re a much better interface than those crappy Psi-Amps we had fighting ADVENT. I’ve already found a range of new techniques and moves that I could not have otherwise come up with the crappy paperweights we used to have”

“Where would you like targets to be put, Johnson?” Vasily Chepurov said, hoisting a small piles worth of wooden planks on his shoulders while carrying something on his back.

The purple man removed a small trinket from one of the bags the soldiers were carrying and pointed it first towards the tree trunk Arya was hiding above, then at several other trees also residing at her general directions. She shook a little, cradling the effigy on one hand and grasping a tree branch on another.

“Right, we’ll set up our targets under twenty-five, fifty and one hundred-meter marks. Have a little target practice for everyone” The purple man responded.

“You don’t want any targets up close?” Another man replied in an another perversion of Watersons accent and displaying yellow-coloured armour. He brandished a curved sword on his back not unlike a quiver and had the complexion of a Dornishman.

“We’re fighting an endless horde of zombies on the castle walls.” Johnson replied. “If they’re even half as dangerous as the Lost are, I don’t think you’ll be making it out alive if they get too close”.

“Ha! Speak for yourself!” Vasily interjected, taking several large wooden boards from the bag and heading towards the trees the purple man had pointed towards.

The non-raspy woman groaned in frustration as she reached for her own bag, which was slung around her shoulder.

“Go ahead, I’ll scan for life forms just to make sure we don’t accidentally shoot any bystanders or animals.” She stated, pulling out what looked like a metal box with four wings adorning each corner.

“Wait, you brought your Gremlin?!” Another soldier in inky black armour interjected in a similar voice to their Central Officer. “Are you trying to piss the Commander off?!”

The woman replied: “First of all, the Commander didn’t specifically mention Gremlins so I’m not violating any rules. Secondly, I doubt there’s anyone to make an incident with and lastly; if there is, you know that I won’t be the one making a scene!”

“Fine, your funeral” the dark-armoured man retorted.

The woman tapped on the winged box, springing to life and it began to fly out of her hands, its unbeating wings glowing blue as it moved about. Almost as soon as it sprung to life, before she could even dive for cover, it shone with the light of a thousand moons, bathing the whole forest in a wave of sky-blue light. The woman gazing at the tablet before turning towards the others.

“Give me a minute, we have company.” She addressed the others, moving towards the Stark girl.

Arya began to unsheathe Needle from her belt as the woman began barrelling towards her, preparing at least for the possibility of a fight. Their Commander may have said that XCOM was here to help, but if there was one thing she learned from her days running from Lannister soldiers trying to kill her and other Stark soldiers deluding themselves into thinking they could protect her, it was that the views and actions of soldiers rarely ever aligned with their masters.

The woman stopped right below her and, grasping the pipe-like end of the weapon with her hands, she struck the branch right below her three times.

“Hey, guy hiding in the tree, could you please get down from there? We’re going to be doing some target practice here and I’d much like it if nobody we didn’t end up accidentally killing anyone today.”

Arya sighed, so much for hiding. She began to climb down with one hand while unflinchingly pointing Needle at the woman soldier, her grip almost slipping on the still-iced bark before she lept down onto the snowy ground. Several of the other soldiers pointed their weapons at her, except for the soldier Johnson and the non-raspy woman.

“Who are you and what the fuck were you doing up there?!” the black-suited soldier pressured.

“My name is Arya Stark, Half-sister to Jon Snow and the daughter of Eddard Stark. Now, unless you want his men running you down to the ground or having Daenerys burn you alive, you should put down your weapons.”

“Who the… hell is Eddard and what is that even supposed to mean?” The raspy woman retorted.

“She was spying on us!” The yellow-armoured soldier yelled. “She wants to gather as much dirt on us as possible so Jon Snow can backstab us once we have done his dirty work!”

“I say we take her to the brig. Give the Commander’s little friend some fresh meat to-“

“Shut up! Both of you!” Johnson shouted. “These people are kind enough to give us hospitality, food and water at our time of need and this is how the lot of you act? Maybe it is you people that deserves a time-out in the brig instead of her!”

“Oh, sure, we’re the assholes in this situation but the sword-wielding girl that hid in a fucking tree for no reason is somehow beyond conviction, Are you even listening to yourself?!” The yellow-armoured soldier retorted.

“Have you even pumped your hate-breaks for one second and bothered to ask her what she was doing? I’m your squad leader, not your babysitter” Johnson spat.

“Fine….” The yellow man replied with gritted teeth. “Arya Stark… what were you doing here?”

She pulled out the Cersei effigy from her bag.

“Same reason as you miserable shits. I was running target practice on this miserable harlot before you people arrived. I only hid in the tree because you idiots were getting in the way”

“Thank you.” Johnson replied. “Would you care to join us? I’m sure my comrades in arms would be more than happy to take a plus one for our little exercise.”

“Sure…. of course we would.” The raspy woman croaked in voice with a level of sarcasm thick enough to cut through with a knife.

“Okay, you’re not helping. Either be nice to our guest or leave”

“Fine”. The raspy woman repacked her things and stomped back out of the wolfswood; clearly wanting no further association with anything that could happen next. The remaining soldiers, frustrated yet perseverant, put up the last of their targets on the tree trunks.

“You’ll have to forgive Corporal Higgs, she hasn’t been too trusting on strangers for ages.”

“What was with her voice? Do all of her kind sound like that?”

“She was like this ever since the Commander enlisted her into XCOM, and, no, not everyone from her lands speaks like that, obviously. We’re foreign, but not that foreign, apparently.”

“I heard her home was burnt down by ADVENT when she was thirteen” The woman shouted.

“I hear that infiltrator disguised as boyfriend slashed her throat!” Chepurov shouted from the distance, midway through hammering the third wooden board in place.

“Regardless….” Johnson interrupted. “I haven’t even properly introduced ourselves. “My name is Captain-Magus Aro Johnson, I am the leader of Alpha squadron, one of the six groups the Commander has sent here; The slab in red over in the distance is Sergeant Vasily Chepurov, the lovely lady in green and brown is Lieutenant Jay Moss, the gentleman in yellow is….”

Arya had since pulled out her quiver back from her bag after moving it towards one of the larger trees, a ways away from the targets, paying little attention to Aro’s little introduction. She pulled her quiver back out of her bag, slinging it over her back as she clutched her bow with an almost deathly grip.

“…Johnson, I don’t think she’s listening.” Jay interrupted him.

“No, by all means, continue what you have going on here, I’m sure you’ll eventually speak about something interesting like, say, those weapons your people keep wanking over, are you trying to compensate for something or what?”

“Ah! Don’t engage, Seyed! I’m warning you!” Jay interrupted as the man in yellow attempted to unsheathe his own sword. She caught his wrist, clenching his sword arm with a tight, yet not deathly grip.

The tension was promptly interrupted by the re-entry of Vasily Chepurov, he was holding a massively oversized weapon almost as large as Arya herself, with a grass-green glow in its heart contrasting its jet-black body with what looked like six dragonglass daggers jutting out of the front of the weapon like the maw of some terrible beast.

“Targets are ready, captain.”

“Ah, splendid timing, Sergeant. It’s high time we got started. Miss Stark, would you like to kick things off for us? I hear you’re one of the best archers around here and, personally, I’d love to see a demonstration.” Aro asked her.

Arya didn’t utter a word, instead grabbing her quiver and, quietly but confidently, nocked one of the arrows onto the bow. She gazed at each of the three targets while silently gauging her surroundings, the wind was almost entirely rendered silent by the surrounding forest and all three targets were within her sights. Each of the targets she noticed bore images of monstrous creatures she mused that XCOM would have fought in their travels.

The nearest depicted a pink, shrivelled man, naked and devoid both of hair and of private parts, its inky black eyes almost completely drawing away the fact that it also didn’t have a nose. The second target bore the image of what she could only describe as a snake-woman, she bore the scales, the body and the needle-like fangs of various snakes she had read from Braavosi and Dornish manuscripts yet it stood upright, bore a weapon somewhat similar on her short, yet spindly arms and, most confusing of all, had breasts; what kind of a god would give a snake breasts?!

The last target was slightly more settling, maybe because there didn’t appear to be anything monstrous, just a full black suit of armour, it was blocky, like he was made of boxes while his helmet covered all but his mouth. From Watersons tales, this was likely the foot soldiers that he was talking about.

More questions were abound in Arya’s mind, Commander Waterson had already told her about the great menace they fought, about ADVENT and their machinations. But how? How could anyone or anything reshape the very essence of life and twist it into their own will? She regained her focus, such matters shouldn’t matter to her and besides, were her mind to wander, it could throw off her aim.

“THUNK”

The arrow fell on the pink creature, its quills making up for the creatures missing nose. Arya pulled an additional two arrows from the quiver, loosing both in rapid succession.

“THUNK”

“THUNK”

The two arrows jutted out of the snakes boob-shaped boobs, an ephemeral attempt at correcting the most contentious of the many affronts to man this creature represented. She removed one last arrow from her quiver and aimed towards the last target, its distance proving more difficult to hit. She loosed the arrow, taking noticeably longer to hit its mark.

“THUNK”

The arrow landed towards the soldier figures crotch, no doubt being as empty and as blank as the ranks of the Unsullied or the court of the Mad King. Except for Pycelle, nobody will ever miss Pycelle. The old, decript fool was probably the only good thing to come out of Cersei’s ascension to the Iron Throne, literally; if Varys was correct about his assassination.

“Holy shit, nice work!” Jay cheered, clapping in applause, Aro followed suit yet the others fiddled around with their equipment, Vasily drew his gaze from his colossal weapon to the applause, noticing the target.

“Nice shot, reminds me of when we hit train going to Madrid!”

“Are you referring to that time when I blew that sectoids brains out two cars away or that time when you-HOLY SHIT WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?!” The black-suited man exclaimed.

“What, what’s wrong?” Aro queried

“WHY DOES THIS CRAZY BITCH HAVE A PILE OF SEVERED FACES IN HER BAG?!” he shouted.

“It’s something I learned from my days in Braavos.” Arya explained. “With these, I can become anyone I want. From the petty smallfolk to the highest of the lords of Westeros, anything within my hearts desire can be within my reach, so long as I have their face.”

“That is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen! And believe me when I say that we’ve seen some shit.” The black-suited guy yelled.

“You sir, have clearly never seen a Faceless transform up close” Seyed chuckled, “One of those things alone is far more gross than anything this girl can whip up from her bag.”

“I’m sorry, a Faceless? Is that supposed to be one of those eeee-vil monsters like the ones you nailed to those tree trunks?” Arya queried.

“To put it simply, imagine the biggest guy you can think of except his skin is melting, he has giant claws for fingers and can shape-shift to anyone it wants without needing any severed faces and in the most disgusting mess of melted flesh and cracked bones. Also their corpses smell like shit too.” Aro explained.

“And his face look like a seal too!” Vasily finished in the distance

Arya pondered for a while, she remembered Robert Baratheon’s tournament she attended seven years ago with her sister and Septa Unella. On the final outing, Gregor Clegane, the Mountain, had cut down his opponent in a single hit with his lance, part of it still wedged the unfortunate souls throat. A creature the size of the Mountain with claw-fingers and being able to skinchange? What other freaks have these people have the gall to fight?

“No! At least those jellied bastards didn’t cut out peoples faces to shape-shift into them!” the black-suited man retorted.

“Right, because we’ve seen people turned to breeding grounds, melted down into goo, blown to pieces in five hundred different ways and rip their own friends and family to bloody pieces but no, the girl with a few faces is the most disgusting thing ever, sure, why not?!”

“Anyway!” Aro interjected, frustrated at his distracted bannermen and apathetic to the subject matter, “Who would like to go next on the targets?”

“I’ll do it”, Jay said, pulling out a small, boxy weapon not unlike the Commander’s weapon she had noticed him carrying on his belt, however this one was simpler, more boxy with a simple iron body with what looked like a wooden handle on the bottom.

“What exactly is that thing? What could possibly be so deadly about that little thing that would make you lot so stuck-up about it?” Arya asked with a curious expression.

“Yeah, wouldn’t you like to know, you crazy-“ The black-suited man quickly replied. His insult stopped in its tracks by Jay and Aro, their gazes appearing almost deathly. He trundled off to the distance, far enough to not draw further attention from the group but close enough to keep eyes on them.

“This, is what we call a pistol, this particular type, or I guess what their makers call them call an M-19-11 Colt, it uses explosive powder to fire slugs of metal an inch long at incredibly fast speed, it’s not the strongest firearm we have but it’s easy to unholster, load and shoot.”

Jay then pulled out a darkened box from her belt, loading it into the pistols handle.

“These ‘bullets’, as we call them, are stored in boxes we call magazines, each of them can store up to seven, with up to eight if there is already one stored in the weapons barrel already.”

“Jay, silencer.” Aro reminded.

“Oh right, these weapons make a hell of a loud noise so Bradford has advised we use these things to dampen the noise a bit. We don’t need more things scaring your soldiers beyond, you know, the living dead.”

Jay pulled out a metal tube, twisting it onto the end of the pistol; lining up towards the first target, she brought her weapon even to her head, the top of the pistol aligned with her eyes as she aimed at the target.

“BANG”

A loud thunderclap emanated from the weapon, the metal slug travelling with such speed Arya couldn’t even see, her eyes turned towards the target, now with a modest-sized hole in it from where this “bullet” struck. Two more fell upon the target before she withdrew the magazine with a simple motion, pulled the top and returned the weapon to her belt.

“Your aim’s getting better Jay, Just allow a moment for the gun to settle next time and you should be okay.” Aro said, giving some applause to her work amidst an apathetic crowd. Seyed rose to his feet, wielding a lengthier weapon not unlike the others, its thick, white ribs masking the muddy-coloured centre.

“I’ll have a go, see if I can get the whole thing in one shot” he said, shoving various cylinders into the weapon.

“Are you going to divulge more random words to throw at me to explain how it works like Jay or will you just lay waste to the entire forest?”

“Neither, all you need to know is that if you even think about turning on us, everyone you’ve ever loved is going to get what this tree is about to ten times over, whether with this shard gun or anything else in our arsenal, it’s all the same.”

He raised his weapon, pumping the lower half with a single, metallic motion, then unleashed an almost deafening roar from the weapon, completely obliterating the wooden target, the tree behind it and leaving deep wounds on the surrounding trees, a faint yellow mist tracking where each piece of sharpened metal travelled in the blink of an eye.

“Seven Hells!” Arya jumped in shock from the blast, barely even able to process the multitude of emotions running through her head; was she impressed? Shocked? Scared? All of the above? These people did not lack in their capacity to destroy. Vasily quickly moved forward, enthusiastically brandishing his hulk of a weapon.

“Ha! You call that ‘threatening’? I’ll show you how to make Stark girl shit herself!”

“Can you at least keep your fire in a straight line? The last thing we need Daenerys to see is that half her forest is destroyed.” Jay insisted.

“Oh, sure” Vasily replied in a snide manner, brandishing his weapon level to his hip, its green heart now glowing like a pestilent sun, the blades on the front spinning faster than any potters wheel.

In an instant, the weapon unleashed a torrent of wildfire, the green spikes roaring from the weapon shattering the tree trunks like glass, consuming the entire area in front of Vasily in a storm of wood splinters and burning tongues of green. The middle target he was barely aiming at was barely even a memory anymore.

Arya could only ponder further, Waterson talked to length about how their hated foe wielded weapons such as these. How much devastation did these ethereal creatures inflict upon their lands? How were they able to take their greatest secrets and strengths and make them their own? And, in this juncture, how could Jon, or even Daenerys keep them under their yoke? What good are dragons when each of their men carry their power? What good are castles when their men can shatter their walls? What use is there in hiding when their tools can find even the most adept in the House of Black and White?

Her shock turned into determination. XCOM presented a unique opportunity to her; These were the Nights Watchmen of their own lands and they brought their own enemies to their knees; if she could take their secrets and bring them into their own, she could do the same; starting with the Army of the Dead. For in her days running from the Kings men and in the depths of Braavos, she was an old acquaintance to Death and its many trappings, and now it had borne a new face in the form of the White Walkers; one final challenge that sought to end all that mattered to her. Yet one last question remained in her mind.

“So, what’s your deal, Aro?” she asked

“Excuse me?”

“If Jay here finds your foes and the rest of them turn your enemies into a bloody puddle, what exactly do you do in all of this? I don’t see a weapon on you.”

“Oh boy, let’s just say he has… other methods.” The dark man quickly interrupted. “And I think it would be better if you didn’t know. There is still so much to our organisation that you don’t know”

“Try me” Arya uttered, determined.

“No. We have lots of work to do preparing your peoples home for the dead, the least you could do is gather a few of those branches and take them back. I’m sure your half-brother would appreciate the help.” Aro insisted.

Arya begrudgingly obliged, she was far from having any quarrel with Jon, with them being close even before her ill-fated journey to Kings Landing eight years ago; but these people had the gall to try and order her around. She gathered a few branches thrown off by Vasily’s weapon and forced them into her bag, she chose to throw the Cersei effigy towards the XCOM soldiers.

“Thank you for your company. May the gods be with you in the coming battle. You can keep that little straw bitch, perhaps leave it in that giant ship or rip it to pieces, I don’t care.”

“Thanks for your time” Aro replied. “I am sorry about our little ‘smoke and mirrors’ antics but it’s the Commander’s orders. This squad is my whan-ow, my family, how far have you gone to protect yours, Arya Stark?”

“Oh my God” Seyed interrupted, “You don’t have to project your kiwi-isms to every last person you see. Look, either way, see you soon and best of luck”

She slung the bag and soon left the XCOM team to their ramblings, she figured that she’ll find their closely guarded secrets eventually without much issue, perhaps those gauntlets Aro was wearing were the key. At the very least it could be worth consulting the Queen over what she saw as such a display was never made on the castle grounds, or at least, not yet.

As she made her return to Winterfell she saw the dragons overhead, all her life she read about the stories of the Targaryen dragons, not only about Aegons conquest but of the dragons and their riders that came long after, such as that of the last time a dragon flew over Winterfell some fifty and nine years after Aegon’s conquest. During which, the King Jaehaerys Targaryen, first of his name came with his wife, Alyssane to the North to meet with House Stark, his wife travelling as far north as the Wall on her dragon Silverwing. It was in that time that King Jaehaerys granted the lands known as the New Gift to the Nights Watch to further provide provisions to the defenders of men. Granted, Lord Alaric Stark wasn’t too elated at the prospect of losing land to the Nights Watchmen, but it was fortunate that the fabled Targaryen coin hadn’t fallen on madness for Jaehaerys, his reign being the longest and one of the most peaceful of all the Targaryen kings.

A fair amount of time passed before Arya returned to the castle walls, its trenches bustling with small and high folk alike, the icy ground that was around in the days after XCOM’s arrival had still remained, albeit with some noteworthy areas such as the gates, the roads and several paths to the trench covered over with sawdust to help speed things along. By now the trench was now fully dug out, with the stakes covered in small amounts of what little pitch and oil remained being thrust into the icy soil as a means to slow down the Dead’s advance. The dragons had since landed a few miles outside of the castle grounds on the other side.

Close to the western gate she noticed Jon and the Queen patrolling the castles edge, they appeared moved closely, occasionally glancing at the workers working in and around the trench. She decided to check in with her brother as well as leave out the branches, unpacking the branches and piling them next to the wall.

“Never thought I’d see you walking among the people” Jon said as she was placing the last of the branches.

Arya gave only a chuckle, “And I never thought you would end up as Warden of the North. I guess these past seven years have changed us far beyond what any of us could have imagined. Regardless, this is our home, and the gods will take me alive before I let an army of dead men destroy our home, not after all that has already happened.”

“Do not worry, once we have defeated the Night King and I have ascended to the throne, the North will have my full support, not only to rebuild what we have lost but to make sure what happened to your father and brothers will never happen again” Daenerys said, her arm wrapped around Jon’s wrist.

Arya’s gaze was drawn to one of the dragons, savagely ripping apart a pig that was brought outside.

“What are they called? I have heard countless tales of them bringing armies and kings alike but ever once have I heard their names.” Arya queried, avoiding the queen’s wishful rhetoric.

“The black one over there is called Drogon, I named him for my late husband, whose life was taken from my by a foul witch claiming to heal the corruption in his wounds.”

“And the other one?”

“The other one I call Rhaegal, his namesake being…”

“Rhaegar Targaryen, your brother” Arya interrupted with a sullen tone. Everyone in the Seven Kingdoms knew the story of how he abducted Lyanna Stark, her aunt twenty years ago that resulted in not only Rhaegar’s death, but his father, his wife and his father, the fabled Mad King under the hand of Robert Baratheon, either with his own hand in Rhaegar’s case, or by others who followed his cause.

“I know what my house did, I know how the Mad King got his name, I hope you can find comfort in the fact that I will make sure that I will not fall to the same vices and temptations that almost brought House Targaryen to ruin.” Daenerys replied.

“No, of course, House Targaryen isn’t all madmen, I could probably name five of your ancestors that who gave their all for the good of the realm. It’s just that I thought I would never see the day when I would be face to face with the blood of Old Valyria.”

“Thank you for your trust, Lady Arya.” Daenerys thanked.

“I’m not a Lady, but, for all our sakes, I hope we get through this together, your grace.” Arya replied, turning her gaze back to Jon.

“Any word from the Last Hearth?” she asked.

“We should have received a raven by now, I just hope the worst hasn’t happened and the Dead have already massacred the place.” Jon replied.

“Any further word from Lord Edmure?” Daenerys asked.

“He’s alive?” Arya asked.

“Walder Frey had him captured after the Red Wedding, why do you ask?”

“I was in the Twins when my brother and mother were murdered by his hand, I didn’t think he made it out alive.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.” Daenerys spoke softly, the two brooding over what they had lost over the years.

“Lady Brienne told me that Jaime Lannister and the Freys used him as leverage to take Riverrun from the Blackfish; it made more sense to keep him alive, I presume.” Jon explained.

Arya continued to brood, it wasn’t that long ago that she found that so many of those she thought had fallen in the wars and treachery over the course of seven years had prevailed. First Hot Pie, then Bran, then Gendry and now, least of all but still noteworthy, her uncle Edmure. All this time she thought her enemies had destroyed everything remotely close to her, stripped her of everything she had loved in the world, only to find them alive and ready to fight with her. Still, it was never too late to lose everything, especially with the Dead marching on the castle.

“I see, what do you make of the other visitors, this XCOM?”

Jon began, “These people were their own brothers of the Watch in their lands. Their power, their knowledge and, if their tales tell true, is exactly what we need. I find it nothing short of a gift from the gods that they come not as conquerors, but as defenders.”

“And you?” Arya queried, turning to the Queen.

“Tyrion has told me much about their realm, about their cities of smooth stone, with towers that scrape the heavens themselves, how they could cure disease and give full bellies to millions of people. It seems almost like a dream.”

“And?” Arya asked, “Is that so ridiculous compared to what you have already seen?”

“Not at all, these people lost everything to these Elders, as their people call it, they kept their people safe and happy, only to slaughter them like cattle. These monsters, these creatures from the void, they kept the people in chains without them even knowing of their bondage until these people of XCOM had revealed it to them. The only relief that I can get from this knowledge is that Ser Waterson made sure they received their justice.”

“And you?” Jon queried? “You don’t seem convinced.”

“I just spoke with his men, they acted as though we want their gifts, their weapons for ourselves and acted like we would turn on them the moment the Dead are no longer a problem.” Arya explained.

“I would do no such thing. These people came to us at our time of need and we need them just as much, their support could just be what we need to turn the tide against the Dead. Jon said.

Daenerys soon voiced her concern. “As long as they keep true to their word, we shall keep them safe, but I would have their ship melted to slag if they think about taking the throne for themselves. These people are visitors and, while we can learn much from them, they should return home and leave this world for its own people to shape its course.”

Arya, clutching her now empty bag and preparing to move back to her chambers offered one last thought:

“That would be a sight to see, their fancy, glimmering ship melting like a giant candle, that is, of course, assuming such a thing was even possible. I wish you a good day, Your Grace.”

She set back on her way, providing a smile and a farewell nod to the happy couple. She of all people could clearly know that the two were more than just allies of convenience and, in truth, she didn’t care much, her closest relative laying with the last descendent of House Targaryen? That felt like almost unreal to Arya in all the best ways she thought possible. All she ever wanted was now within her grasp, her vengeance almost complete, her loved ones finding happiness and the crimes inflicted upon House Stark almost undone; all that stood in her way was the Night King, death had come to her in many faces, and this time she would be looking forward to this one.

* * *

** WINTERFELL FORGE: COLONEL JANE KELLY **

“Can I help you?” The man asked, his face somewhat blackened from coal dust and holding an obsidian cast on one side. The forges were dark and damp, what illumination there was provided only by the kilns and the occasional torch. Each footstep given by the nearby smiths splashing black water over Janes brown-blue suit of Warden armour.

“I was informed you’re the one to go to with regards to shaping dragon-glass?” Jane asked

“I guess I would be the expert around here, come to think of it. We’ve never had reason to shape the stuff until a few months ago” He chuckled, “Anyway, the name’s Gendry, what is it you need?”

Jane removed a small box full of ammunition from her pouch, removing a single bullet from a magazine in the box, she unscrewed the bullets very tip, removing the tip. Even in XCOM’s early days, before ADVENT, it was made standard that every type of bullet in its arsenal be able to have interchangeable tips to help keep up with the potential arms race they would inevitably end up with the aliens. Such innovations proved extremely successful too, with inventions like Talon rounds being able to crack open Cryssalids like a can of tuna.

Jane handed the tip to Gendry, allowing him to get a feel of the objects shape.

“We need as many of these as you can reasonably produce, from what Jon Snow has told about these White Walkers and their armies, a fair portion of our existing weapons aren’t able to properly kill them. Rip them to pieces? Perhaps, but every single bullet I have in this box means one more of the dead down for the count and it’s a disgusting waste having to use more than one on an army of hundreds of thousands.” She explained.

“Aye, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem, I’m not sure how I can make these fancy grooves on the bottom, however.” Gendry replied, gently feeling the screw pattern on the bottom with his stained fingers.

“Leave that to us, we can take care of that ourselves. Feel free to give any scraps you cannot work as well, the Commander has something special in mind for that dragon the Night King has and it doesn’t need too much effort on your side.”

“I’ll let the other smiths know. It might be a little difficult getting as many of these things as you want. Arming the queens army and all, you understand?”

“Well, do what you can, at the very least we’ll need about a hundred of those for our men for those special occasions against the White Walkers at least, we don’t necessarily need to kill the dead, just neutralise them, rob them of their ability to pose a threat. I know this, the Commander knows his and everyone that leads a squad knows this. Sometimes it is easier to subdue an opponent than to kill them.”

“I guess so. Your Commander must be the stuff of legends given his background.”

“What?”

“Is he not the son of a bastard? Were his parents not named after the lands rather than house?”

“No! What the hell are you talking about?”

“I’m a bastard myself, you see, the last son, albeit illegitimate, of the late king Robert Baratheon. All bastards born are forced to take their second name from their land rather than their house: Snow for the North, Rivers for the Riverlands, Stone for the Vale, Pyke for the Iron Islands, Hill for the Westerlands, Storm for the Stormlands, Flowers for the Reach, Sand for Dorne and, lastly, Waters for the Crownlands. As I took from Kings Landing, My full name is Gendry Waters. Is it coincidence that Commander Waterson is named so similarly?”

“No, of course not, wait… Doesn’t that mean that your Jon Snow is a bastard too?”

“Indeed, he has the blood of none other than Eddard Stark flowing through his veins, I don’t know about the mother though. It seems that anyone who could have possibly known who birthed him is no longer alive to say so, as far as I am aware. Or maybe they were sworn to secrecy, who knows?”

Jane only nodded in response, merely pretending to understand what exactly this “Eddard Stark” or the Iron Islands were or held any kind of relevancy to finding a way home.

“Of course, but no, none of us know nor care about the Commander’s parentage. We didn’t follow him because he crawled out of the right woman. As a matter of fact, that crap doesn’t even matter in our world since we elect our leaders rather than begrudgingly tolerate them. Regardless, we chose the Commander because he works. He’s not the most charismatic nor the strongest man I know, far from that, but you can be damn sure he will make their enemies wish they never crossed him. It doesn’t matter how much the odds are stacked against us, it doesn’t matter how dire our prospects our, for as long as one of us are still alive, the Commander will obliterate them off the face of the earth. I’ve never seen someone quite as bright or as strategically adept as him”

“You sound almost as if you worship the guy.”

“I know, but it hasn’t even been a year since he overthrew ADVENT and now world leaders have gone back to shitting on him on a regular basis for whatever reason they please, blaming him for taking sides in regional disputes when he clearly didn’t, the murder of millions under the Elders hands which is completely rich considering he’s the only reason we aren’t just alien soup right now. It’s seriously sad to see how our literal saviour receive such a treatment. I even saw one of my own drunkenly shouting how the Commander hates people.”

“And he didn’t do any of those things?”

“No, I’ve known him even before I helped break him out of the Elders hands. He does legitimately love his soldiers, myself included. It’s just not in the usual sense, he doesn’t talk the talk but he walks the walk, if you get what I mean.”

“No, I have no idea what in the seven hells that is supposed to mean.”

“Fine, you don’t have to understand since I’m not asking you to follow him.

“Very well. I’ll have my smiths forge out your dragon-glass bullets with all haste. I’ll also have the scraps delivered as requested. Thank you for your time…. Sorry, I never got your name”

“Colonel Jane Kelly, leader of Menace squadron.” She replied.

“Farewell, Colonel Jane Kelly, let’s hope we can get through this together.” Gendry addressed, carrying the bullet as well as the obsidian cast and a few fresh-forged spears.

Jane was prepared to head back to camp until her communicator rang in a noticeable yet not annoying ring.

“Colonel Kelly Speaking….” She stated.

“Hey, Shen has given the all-clear to go. I need to speak with you before we cast off to Kings Landing, straighten a few things out.”

The Commanders voice spoke. He had established a clear system of communicating with the various earpieces that Engineering developed. While the Commander could communicate with anyone in XCOM with such as earpiece, sending active correspondence to the Commander himself was strictly limited to department leaders of all branches including research, engineering, crew and each active squad. Additionally, each squad and department had their own communication channels where they could also speak freely outside of the prying eyes of others. This chain of command proved effective during the fight against ADVENT,

“I’ll be right there, keep me posted if there is anything you need.”

She slung her bag back on her back and proceeded to exit the room, the humid warmth of Winterfells forge slowly, but sharply giving way back to the crisp winter cold outside. She checked in with the various other members of Menace squad to check on what they were doing: Sergeant “Specter” Muller was busy tinkering with his gauss sniper to compensate for what he presumed would be a small drop in muzzle velocity from the obsidian rounds, Lieutenant-Acolyte “Helios” Persepholus had spent more time either in the Avengers Psi chamber or, more recently, the castles expansive crypts, than outside, what with his signature Soulfire, Lance and Fortress techniques being completely impossible to train without arousing suspicion in the locals; Captain Bao “Yang” Ling had spent her hours calibrating her Mag cannon as well as continually ferrying ammunition from the ship to the castle grounds, Lieutenant “Gears” Sladowska sought every excuse he could to polish his fancy, self-made hover-cycle, it proved a task of its own to keep him out of the ship and somewhere more useful to both parties.

She found herself by the castles training grounds. Several horses were kept far in front while others trained by the sword, with trainees ranging from hardened veterans to young girls. She also noticed Captain “Bush” Holland among them, the Aussie always preferred to brutalise his enemies up close when he wasn’t trying to socialise with anything that had a pulse.

As she tried to make her way out, her passage was interrupted with the entry of a couple of mongoloids in ill-fitting winter clothing, their fur coats poorly obscuring their leather vests underneath, their hair was tied into braids and walked almost bow-legged. They burst into laughter as they approached her, blade in one hand and horse on the other.

“Can I help you?” she asked with an almost condescending tone.

They began to talk in a foreign drawl, first in a playful tone to each other then began moving on her, seeming to laugh and at her while swinging their hook-shaped swords around. Their tones began to sour as Jane could discern names, they spoke of the Commander in as much disdain as in anger.

“Can you please step aside? I’m on a schedule right now and I don’t have time to take your crap!”

They began to shout at her, pointing their blades at her while shouting what could only be assumed as curses in their foreign drawl, they began to get within touching distance of the Colonel before she began to lash out. In almost an instant, she drew the Arashi shotgun from her belt holster and, with a lightning fast pump, let out a deafening blast in the air before pressing the barrel towards the face of the man on the left.

“Next one’s going between your eyes, now back your filthy ass away from me before I splatter your brains all over this place!”

What seemed to be the entire castle fell silent, eyes on all sides turned towards the three in a wealth of different expressions: some scared and frightened, others annoyed and frustrated

Another man, obviously Westerosi and seemingly older than the both of them combined ran and barged in between both of them, he began to speak to the nomads in their language, getting into an almost heated exchange in between them before they backed off, given how he name-dropped the Queens name, she figured he threatened the two with death at her Majesty’s hand. The man began to turn towards Jane.

“Are you hurt?” the man asked.

“No, thanks for coming in, I didn’t want to make a scene. Anyway, I have business to take care of back in the ship” Jane replied

“It seems that both of us do, the Queen has informed me that your commander wishes to cast off, and she would personally like to speak with him.”

“Fine, I guess we can both take care of errands.”

They began to exit the castle grounds together, Jane long since putting her shotgun back in her rather oversize holster.

“I do apologise for that exchange, most among the Dothraki were already mistrustful of people from Westeros, much less from another world.”

“What exactly were those two saying?”

“I think it’s better if you don’t know” the man said, nervously.

“I’m not a pussy, I can handle an insult or two.”

The man sighed, following her lead as Jane continued her way back to the Avenger.

“Ever since your people fell upon this world, I have heard many riders refer to your kind as demons, as foul perversions of man that came into these lands by sorcery and blood magic, a scourge sent from hell to finish what they started.”

“What they started? That doesn’t make any sense, what would even be finishing?”

“Some seven years ago, Daenerys had married to one Khal Drago, leader of the greatest of the many khalasars that roamed the Dothraki Sea over in Essos. When he fell weak after duelling with a bloodrider who objected to wedding her, a witch offered her services to heal him.”

“Wait, what was the guy who married Daenerys called again?” Jane queried.

“Khal Drogo” He answered

“Khal…. Khan… oh, fuck me.” She sighed.

Jane had remembered when the Commander told her the story of Genghis Khan and how, coincidentally, he had dominated half the known world on horseback. He was always into the great conquerors and battles of historical times, she always wondered if it was at least one reason he was so good at what he did.

“Whatever, continue.”

“The witch, one Mirri Maz Dur, took the life of Daenerys’ unborn child to heal the Khals wounds, yet she also put him in a ceaseless sleep. When she learned what she wrought with her son’s life, he had her husband put to rest and burned the witch and herself alive.”

“You’re shitting me? Really?!” Jane gasped.

“I saw it with my own eyes, and from the ashes rose Daenerys herself, alive and with three young, newly hatched dragons. The first of their kind in over a hundred years, and two of which you can see in the skies above you”

“And the army of the Dead killed the third dragon” she finished.

“By the Night King’s own hand, as she says”

“No wonder they call her ‘Mother of Dragons’ It sounds like you know a lot about them, Sir….”

“Sir Jorah Mormont, I serve as one of the queen’s advisors and as her sworn sword.”

“Colonel Jane Kelly.”

By now, they were with a mile of the Avenger, its frame clearly visible with the aforementioned dragons making their arrival from behind them.

“So, what about the others? I haven’t seen them speak much with us since we arrived.” Jane asked

“The smallfolk of the North don’t take kindly to outsiders, it is a simple reality that not only your people have faced but of the Queens, most have never heard of folk from Essos, much less seen them. I don’t know much of the others, though I have heard of several Wildings speaking referring to your people as ‘skyfolk’, for a less developed and struggling people, your kind have proven quite attractive to them.”

“’Skyfolk’, seems apt given the circumstances” Jane commented.

The dragons had since landed about a hundred metres from the service ramp, she could see the figures of Daenerys and Jon as well as several soldiers, scientists and engineers from the ship both off-loading supplies and gearing up for their temporary move to the castle.

“I must speak with the Queen, thank you for your company, Colonel Jane Kelly”

As the two moved up on the service ramp. Jorah spoke closely with Daenerys. The Commander, with a tablet on his right hand proceeded to wave at Jane, dismissing an engineer he was speaking with.

“Commander.” She greeted

“Col. Kelly, How is Menace squad doing?”

“As good as they can be, given what’s going on, I’m not sure, however if we can bring Persepholus in, he’s grown more attached to his powers than his weapons.”

“Can he fight?”

“Not with the rules in place” Jane promptly replied.

“I understand, I’ve spent the past few days speaking with these people as well as look at their history and practices, I think now’s a better time than any to make some changes now we know a thing or two about what’s going on.”

“So what’s different now?”

“Firstly, I’m lifting the ban on Psi Operatives using their powers, it’s an exorbitant waste to leave them around otherwise and obviously, they’ve proven very effective on the field; secondly, soldiers can allow locals to borrow their weapons but in **emergency circumstances only** ”

“Define ‘emergency’” Jane asked.

“I mean an ‘Oh no, a zombie is about to eat my face, take my gun and shoot him in the face’ emergency, not a ‘These abs of mine are to die for” emergency, make bloody sure Holland knows that, knowing him, he’s probably already tried to show off his guns.

“Wait, do you mean his muscles or his actual...”

“Both!”

“Fine, can I ask a question?”

“Sure, I’m all ears.”

“What’s the plan? The Dead, that is. Surely you’ve spoken with Jon about this.”

“He’s told me the Night King is central to all of this; that, since killing a White walker also destroys any zombies it reanimates like Sectoids or Gatekeepers. The plan’s pretty simple: We lure him out, we put an obsidian bullet between his eyes, simple as that. It’s like our run-ins with the Lost, albeit we have a defensive advantage and there is a **lot** of them.”

“Surely the Night King isn’t stupid enough to show his face when he has hundreds of thousands of zombies at his disposal, your plan doesn’t sound convincing.”

“Well, we do have a few things in our favour, first of all is that I’ve had engineers bring out as many proximity mines as we can to slow their advance in addition to the firing lines our gunners will present; secondly, Bran tells me he has his dead dragon as his mount like some undead edgelord. If we can kill the dragon, or at least down him in a good location we can have our snipers or literally anyone with obsidian weapons finish the job. As I said, easy.”

“Sounds good to me. And what after?”

“We compile what we have learned and find a way home. As per our deal, the Queen or at least Jon will give us the materials we need. Be it food, water or materials they may or may not see any value in.”

“And what makes you think Daenerys will hold up her end of the deal?”

“She’s a just person, everyone I’ve met under her wing talks about how she freed them from slavery or how she cares deeply for the people she commands and how she is an unstoppable force of sheer will and determination.” The Commander explained.

“But?”

“How many lives have been lost because one person thought they could solve all the worlds problems? She has a good heart, but if nobody is around to temper her worst impulses, bad things will happen, to put it in the mildest sense. There’s a good reason people equate passion to a burning flame, left uncontrolled, it destroys more than it forges.”

“As much as I like to hear your lessons in philosophy, I mean, what are we going to do if she decides not to hold up her end of the deal?”

“We take back what is ours, by force if necessary, and find someone who will. This world is just as big and as complex as ours and I’m sure we’d find at least one person in power who is willing to help us.”

“Right, one more thing, you mentioned before that in addition to Menace, Fury and Alpha squad, you’re bringing in two more squads, if I may ask…”

“Bravo and Delta squad, though I have done some rearranging, as nice as it would be to have a SPARK or a Skirmisher around, I still don’t think they’d sit well with the others. Anyway, We still need Wraith squad on the ship in case we need an infiltration and, as for Raven and Storm squad, we still need something on the ship to keep it safe from any potential intruders.”

“So, Annette and Scorch are staying too?”

“Yes, As good as Durand is, I don’t think she’ll be much use against the Night King beyond a hallucination at best, Scorch stays too because… obviously.”

Central soon appeared, his bag and rifle slung on his shoulder, by now the service ramp itself was almost empty as the last of the crew were offloading their things. He soon joined the two.

“That’s the last of the things, Commander, we’re good to go. Are you sure you want to do this?” Central said, adjusting the sling.

“Certain, we aren’t dealing with ADVENT anymore. We can afford to be in more than one place at once and our forces here need someone to rally to.”

“Wait, what’s going on?” Jane asked.

“Central will be staying too, we need someone that Daenerys knows is close and can act on my behalf for everyone in Winterfell. Even with comms, I can’t be everywhere at once.”

“And you’re fine with this?” Jane queried, looking at Central.

“It’s the Commander’s decision, there’s no room for argument in these trying times. Besides, as he said, we aren’t dealing with ADVENT anymore; I think it’s high time for our leader to speak for himself as he did back there in the Great Hall. Besides, if these people are any indication, then we need a negotiator that sounds as British as the rest of them.”

“Now hold up, you want the Commander to potentially negotiate with these mouth-breathers? Just because this Jon Snow or Daenerys Targaryen can keep an open mind, do you seriously believe that everyone else in this place do?”

The Commander interjected, a smile growing on his face, “Central’s been teaching me the ins and outs of negotiating so, I have that going for me, secondly, we only need to succeed once to get ourselves a backup plan. Any one of the nine Free cities in Essos could provide more than enough and I haven’t even added them on the list.”

“Ok, sure, whatever.” Jane sighed, her emotions quickly going from one variety of confusion to another as she experienced a wet rasping sensation on her right hand, as Central put on a restrained smile too, their gaze drawn away both from each other and from Jane.

“Oh, one more thing.” The Commander said, pulling a disc-shaped object from his pocket, handing the thing to Central.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Shen had these Recall beacons developed from the Chosen sarcophagi, if worse comes to worse, be it the Dead or Daenerys turns on us, it will be able to teleport you back to the Avenger.”

“Why are you bringing this up now? And why just the one?” Jane asked.

“Because Shen was only able to scrounge up enough sarcophagus material for four recall beacons, and these things will burn out after a single use so Do. Not. Waste. Them. Okay?”

“Sure.” Central replied.

“Okay, to activate it, press the central button once, this will extend these four toggles.” The Commander said, pressing the button on the disc.

“That will prime the beacon, then twist the midsection like so…” He demonstrated further, using the toggles to twist the discs middle, in doing so, a series of crisscrossing lines glowed purple along with the button.”

“And then you just press the button again to teleport. If you accidentally press the button, just retract the toggles in the body like so, just make sure you untwist it first.” The Commander finished, deactivating the beacon before giving the device to Central.

“Press, twist, then press again, got it. I guess the rest of the beacons are for the other senior staff.”

“Indeed. We can’t afford to confine Tygan and Shen to the ship. Besides, I know that you can take care of yourself, Jane, but the last time Central went in the field he almost died because he thought charging the Viper King was a good idea.”

“It was!” Central uttered.

“He turned you to an icicle!” They both replied.

The three quickly fell quiet, with Central soon smiling with the Commander.

“Hey Jane…” The Commander said, stifling a giggle, “Behind you.”

“Wha-OH GOD!” Jane shouted, falling down on her hands and knees. A wolf, as white as the snow around her and rising almost half her height had snuck behind her, the rasping sensation turning out to be just the dog licking her fingers. It inched backward in response, its ears quickly drooping down in slight disappointment.

“Ghost!” Jon shouted in the distance, quickly closing the gap with her, Daenerys and Jorah in tow. Both of the XCOM leaders burst out laughing at Janes reaction. The wolf quickly left to accompany Jon and the others.

“How long was that thing behind me?” Jane raised, brushing the snow off her coat as she got back up.

They barely even had the breath to answer her question from her laughter, even when the Westerosi were right in front of them, the Commander did his best to regain his composure before addressing the three.

“Oh, whew, sorry about that. My, he is one magnificent thing, isn’t he?” The Commander said, taking a knee to look at the fluffy beast eye-to-eye, taking a hand to rub his thick neck fur. It was years since he saw a wolf in the flesh, ADVENT had launch a campaign to exterminate any and all domestic animals on the planet: Dogs, cats, horses, livestock and so much more fell to ADVENT’s chopping block. Even to this day nobody knew why their extermination was so comprehensive, was it a means to hamper the resistance? Control food supply? Or was there some more insidious motive to this genocide?

Jon smiled. “Had him ever since he was a pup, We’ve looked out for each other since that day.”

“I have to ask, but isn’t he a direwolf? I read up about them and how they’re the sigil of your house just like the dragons of House Targaryen.”

Jon tensed slightly, “You’re right that he is a Direwolf, but I’m not a Stark, I’ve never been.”

“Rubbish, you have Stark blood flowing through your veins and you’re Warden of the North because of that, that makes you as much of a Stark as anyone else in my eyes. We have a saying in our world, if it looks like a monkey and it sounds like a monkey, it’s a monkey.”

Daenerys couldn’t help but smile at Jon, her eyes almost perplexed at him. It didn’t take someone like Jane to know that the two were more than just allies. The Commander soon went back up, brushing off a few strands of hair that stuck to his glove.

“So, what brings you here?”

“We wanted to go through a couple of things before you casted off, we also wanted to give you something as thanks for your support.” Daenerys addressed

“Very well, what is it you need?” The Commander said.

“The opposite, as a matter of fact, Lady Brienne informed me that you were heading to Valyria.”

“That is correct.”

“Well, Valyria is a dangerous place, many a sailor has ventured to the land of my ancestors only to find themselves consumed by the very ashes that brought the Doom. While I have no doubts you will find what you need to get home, I do think you will need a guide. Sir Jorah here is the best I know, he has been to all corners of Essos and knows of its many places from Pentos to Asshai.”

“Thank you very much, we’ll assign him a room and take care of him as our own. Don’t worry, he’ll be safe under our wing. Though I will need to ask this, as silly as it may be.” The Commander said, turning to Jorah, “Sir Jorah, would you like to join us in the Avenger?”

“I would be honoured to join you, Commander Waterson. I hope I can do what I can bring the light to your lands with the same fervour as your people are for ours.”

“Thank you, Sir Jorah. If you just go up on the service ramp there is a man waiting there to help show you around and help you get comfortable. If there is anything you need, let me know.”

“Thank you, Commander.” He replied, making his way up the service ramp.

“Commander, I would also ask you a favour of you.” Jon suggested, presenting what appeared to be a bracelet made of a darkened grey metal.

“This chain link used to belong to one Maester Luwin, he sought to the many concerns of House Stark for years and was a good friend. Some six years ago he died helping by brothers Bran and Rickon to safer pastures.”

“I.. think I see where this is going.” The Commander replied.

“You do?” Jane replied, puzzled at his clarity.

“Yeah, I think recall one of the maesters, perhaps Sam or Wolkan, saying that they get these fancy chain links according to profession? I don’t remember exactly what each referred to but, if I remember correctly, the one for the so-called ‘higher mysteries’ was….”

“….Valyrian Steel” Daenerys finished.

“I know it sounds like too much.” Jon continued. “But, out of anyone living, your people have the best chance of finally learning how the Valyrians forged this metal. You know that Valyrian steel can kill the White Walkers and their armies, you know what this means to us and if Winterfell falls.”

“It won’t, you have my word.” The Commander interjected.

“Even so, we must be prepared for every outcome, and if we can forge and shape Valyrian steel to our needs and our desire, we would have a massive advantage against the Dead.”

“We’ll see what we can do. Perhaps we might find such a material useful for our own needs. They say no sword holds an edge quite like Valyrian steel, and I’d very much like to find out why.”

He took the chain link from Jon, stashing it in his pocket.

“Thank you for helping us in our time of need, Jon Snow, I hope I can return the favour in the coming battle.”

“And thank you for your support, Commander, I wish you the best fortune in your voyage east.”

With a small grimace on his face, the Commander began to disappear back into the ship alone, what was bustling with activity a day before fell into silence.

“You might want to stand back” Jane insisted, moving away from the ship. The rest followed suit.

Alarms blared out as the Avenger’s service ramp began to withdraw into the ship, punctuated soon by the roar of the engines coming to life, throwing up small drifts of snow from the underside as it did so. The dragons inched back as their irritability grew increasingly tangible. As the alarms stopped and the whirring of the engines rotors reached their peak, the gargantuan mass lifted itself up, marked by the signature mechanical growl that rung all too familiar to Jane and Central.

In the space of only a few minutes, the Avenger, roughly a quarter to a third the size of Winterfell itself, was gone, seemingly absorbed into the clear winter sky. All that was left for the five of them was to return to the castle.

Jane watched as Daenerys appeared to get on the larger, red-black dragon, and immediately take off back to the castle. Jon and Ghost then approached the other, greenish dragon and, after Jon also mounted the dragon like the Queen did, he gestured to the wolf to get on. He lept on the dragons wing then tenderly moved to Jon’s side; he produced a strap and fastened himself both to dragon and wolf alike. Afterwards, just like his grace, he took off, heading back to the castle, leaving only Central and Jane behind.

“And so it goes.” Jane muttered.

Central sighed: “Right, I’ll check in with Scipio, see how they’re holding up. In the meantime, speak with one of the builders, see if they need another pair of hands.”

“Sure thing. If you need anything, give me a call.” Jane said, promptly making her way back to the castle with her bag and weapons still slung on her back. She kept wondering to herself, what on earth just happened? These people rode goddamn dragons like horses. This wasn’t too much of an issue for Daenerys due to her well-known “Mother of Dragons” epithet. But, barely a few days ago, Jon Snow had somehow graduated from going from the Avenger to Winterfell on horseback from when XCOM first landed to outright flying back on a dragon. Why was that? Jane knew about the first time she tried to ride a horse; she broke her ankle when the horse threw her off. Something deeper was going on, something Jane wasn’t even sure Jon himself knew of.

“My god, what kind of hellhole have we run ourselves into?” she muttered, slowly trundling back to the castle. The questions would have to be put aside for now, there was a battle to prepare for.

**Author's Note:**

> I do not claim ownership of either the XCOM or Game of Thrones franchises, such works are the properties of 2K Games and HBO respectively.
> 
> UPDATE: Thank you all so much for your support and sticking with me on the completion of Chapter 1, I am sorry for not releasing these parts in a punctual manner but significant personal commitments and difficulties in writing style have prevented me from doing so, if you would like to help contribute to DoT either through story suggestions, art or for beta-reading, feel free to give me a PM and I will get back to you as soon as possible.


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